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% 4- 



AFOOT IN 
ENGLAND 



BOOKS BY W. H. HUDSON 



GREEN MANSIONS 

TALES OF THE PAMPAS 

BIRDS AND MAN 

A LITTLE BOY LOST 

AFOOT IN ENGLAND 

RALPH HERNE [in Preparation] 



NEW YORK: ALFRED : A : KNOPF 



AFOOT IN ENGLAND 



W. H. HUDSON 




NEW YORK 

ALFRED. A < KNOPF 
1922 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 

Published, May, 1922 



\ 'v 



tv 



Set up, electrotyped. and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. 
Paper (Warren's) lurnishcd by Henry Lindenmeyr di Sons, New York, N. Y. 
Bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. 

MANUrACTUEED IN THE UNITBD STATES OF AMERICA 



Contents 

L Guide Books: An Introduction, 9 

//. On Going Back, 21 

///. Walking and Cycling, 33 

IV. Seeking a Shelter, 41 

V. Wind, Wave, and Spirit, 52 

VI. By Swallowfield, 76 

VII. Roman Calleva, 87 

VIII. A Cold Day at Silchester, 95 

IX. Rural Rides, 103 

X. The Last of his Name, 131 

XI. Salisbury and its Doves, 145 

XII . Whitesheet Hill, 153 

XIII. Bath and Wells Revisited, 161 

XIV. The Return of the Native, 177 
XV. Summer Days on the Otter, 185 

XVI. In Praise of the Cow, 193 



Contents 



CHAPTER 

XVll. 


An Old Road Leading Nowhere, 




200 , 


XVIIL 


Branscombe, 209 


XIX. 


Abbotsbury, 220 


XX, 


Salisbury Revisited, 230 


XXL 


Stonehenge, 239 


XXIL 


The Village and '*The Stones," 254 


XXIIL 


Following a River, 266 


XXIV, 


Troston, 273 


XXV, 


My Friend Jack, 298 



AFOOT IN 
ENGLAND 



Chapter One: Guide-Books: 
An Introduction 

Guide-books are so many that it seems probable we 
have more than any other country — possibly more 
than all the rest of the universe together. Every 
county has a little library of its own — guides to its 
towns, churches, abbeys, castles, rivers, mountains; 
finally, to the county as a whole. They are of all 
prices and all sizes, from the diminutive paper-covered 
booklet, worth a penny, to the stout cloth-bound 
octavo volume which posts eight or ten or twelve 
shillings, or to the gigantic folio county history, the 
huge repository from which the guide-book maker 
gets his materials. For these grerat works are also 
guide-books, containing everything we want to learn, 
only made on so huge a scale as to be suited to the 
coat pockets of Brobdingnagians rather than of little 
ordinary men. The wonder of it all comes in when 
we find that these books, however old and compara- 
tively worthless they may be, are practically never 
wholly out of date. When a new work is brought 
out (dozens appear annually) and, say, five thousand 
copies sold, it does not throw as many, or indeed any, 
copies of the old book out of circulation: it supersedes 
nothing. If any man can indulge in the luxury of a 
new up-to-date guide to any place, and gets rid of his 

9 



Afoot in England 

old one (a rare thing to do), this will be snapped up 
by poorer men, who will treasure it and hand it down 
or on to others. Editions of 1.860-50-40, and older, 
are still prized, not merely as keepsakes but for study 
or reference. Any one can prove this by going the 
round of a dozen second-hand booksellers in his own 
district in London. There will be tons of literary 
rubbish, and good stuff old and new, but few guide- 
books — in some cases not one. If you ask your man 
at a venture for, SLay, a guide to Hampshire, he Will 
most probably tell yxDu that he has not one in stocrk; 
then, in his anxiety to do business, he will, perhaps, 
fish out a guide to DerbysJiire, dated 1854 — a shabby 
old book — and offer it for four or five shillings, the 
price of a Crabbe in eight volumes, or of Gibbon's 
Decline and Fall in six volumes, bound in calf. 
Talk to this man, and to the other eleven, and they will 
tell you that there is always a sale for guide-books — ■ 
that the supply does not keep pace with the demand. 
It may be taken as a fact that most of the books of 
this kind published during the last half-century — many 
millions of copies in the aggregate — axe stiU in ex- 
istence and are valued possessions. 

There is nothing to quarrel with in all this. As a 
people we run about a great deal; and having curious 
minds we naturally wish to know all there is to be 
known, or all that is interesting to know, about the 
places we visit. Then, again, our time as a rule being 
limited, we want the whole matter^ — history, antiqui- 
ties, places of interest in the neighbourhood, etc. — in 
a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose well 

10 



Guide-Books: An Introduction 

enough; but it is not thrown away like the newspaper 
and the magazines; however cheap and badly got up 
it may be, it is taken home to serve another purpose, 
to be a help to memory, and nobody can have it until 
its owner removes himself (but not his possessions) 
from this planet; or until the broker seizes his belong- 
ings, and guide-books, together with other books, are 
disposed of in packages by the auctioneer. 

In all this we see that guide-books are very im- 
portant to us, and that there is little or no fault to 
be found with them, since even the worst give some 
guidance and enable us in after times mentally to 
revisit distant places. It may then be said that there 
are really no bad guide-books, and that those that are 
good in the highest sense are beyond praise. A rev- 
erential sentiment, which is almost religious in 
character, connects itself in our minds with the very 
name of Murray. It is, however, possible to make 
an injudicious use of these books, and by so doing to 
miss the fine point of many a pleasure. The very fact 
that these books are guides to us and invaluable, and 
that we readily acquire the habit of taking them about 
with us and consulting them at frequent intervals, 
comes between us and that rarest and most exquisite 
enjoyment to be experienced amidst novel scenes. He 
that visits a place new to him for some special object 
rightly informs himself of all that the book can tell 
him. The knowledge may be useful; pleasure is with 
him a secondary object. But if pleasure be the main 
object, it will only be experienced in the highest degree 
by him who goes without book and discovers what 

II 



Afoot in England 

old Fuller called the "observables" for himself. 
There will be no mental pictures previously formed; 
consequently what is found will not disappoint. 
When the mind has been permitted to dwell before- 
hand on any scene, then, however beautiful or grand 
it may be, the element of surprise is wanting and 
admiration is weak. The delight has been discounted. 

My own plan, which may be recommended only to 
those who go out for pleasure — who value happiness 
above useless (otherwise useful) knowledge, and the 
pictures that live and glow in memory above albums 
and collections of photographs — is not to look at a 
guide-book until the place it treats of has been ex- 
plored and left behind. 

The practical person, to whom this may come as 
a new idea and who wishes not to waste any time in 
experiments, would doubtless like to hear how the 
plan works. He will say that he certainly wants all 
the happiness to be got out of his rambles, but it is 
clear that without the book in his pocket he would 
miss many interesting things : Would the greater de- 
gree of pleasure experienced in the others be a suf- 
ficient compensation? I should say that he would gain 
more than he would lose; that vivid interest and pleas- 
ure in a few things is preferable to that fainter, more 
diffused feeling experienced in the other case. Again, 
we have to take into account the value to us of the 
mental pictures gathered in our wanderings. For we 
know that only when a scene is viewed emotionally, 
when it produces in us a shock of pleasure, does it 
become a permanent possession of the mind; in other 

12 



Guide-Books: An Introduction 

words, it registers an image which, when called up 
before the inner eye, is capable of reproducing a mea- 
sure of the original delight. 

In recalling those scenes which have given me the 
greatest happiness, the images of which are most vivid 
and lasting, I find that most of them are of scenes or 
objects which were discovered, as it were, by chance, 
which I had not heard of, or else had heard of and 
forgotten, or which I had not expected to see. They 
came as a surprise, and in the following instance one 
may see that it makes a vast difference whether we 
do or do not experience such a sensation. 

In the course of a ramble on foot in a remote dis- 
trict I came to a small ancient town, set in a cup- 
like depression amidst high wood-grown hills. The 
woods were of oak in spring foliage, and against that 
vivid green I saw the many-gabled tiled roofs and tall 
chimneys of the old timbered houses, glowing red and 
warm brown in the brilliant sunshine — a scene of 
rare beauty, and yet it produced no shock of pleasure; 
never, in fact, had I looked on a lovely scene for the 
first time so unemotionally. It seemed to be no new 
scene, but an old familiar one; and that it had certain 
degrading associations which took away all delight. 

The reason of this was that a great railway company 
had long been "booming" this romantic spot, and 
large photographs, plain and coloured, of the town 
and its quaint buildings had for years been staring at 
me in every station and every railway carriage which 
I had entered on that line. Photography degrades 
most things, especially open-air things; and in this 

13 



Afoot in England 

case, not only had its poor presentments made the 
scene too famihar, but something of the degradation 
in the advertising pictures seemed to attach itself to 
the very scene. Yet even here, after some pleasure- 
less days spent in vain endeavours to shake off these 
vulgar associations, I was to experience one of the 
sweetest surprises and dehghts of my life. 

The church of this village-like town is one of its 
chief attractions; it is a very old and stately building, 
and its perpendicular tower, nearly a hundred feet 
high, is one of the noblest in England. It has a 
magnificent peal of bells, and on a Sunday afternoon 
they were ringing, filling and flooding that hollow in 
the hills, seeming to make the houses and trees and 
the very earth to tremble with the glorious storm of 
sound. Walking past the church, I followed the 
streamlet that runs through the town and out by a cleft 
between the hills to a narrow marshy valley, on the 
other side of which are precipitous hills, clothed from 
base to summit in oak woods. As I walked through 
the cleft the musical roar of the bells followed, and 
was hke a mighty current flowing through and over 
me; but as I came out the sound from behind ceased 
suddenly and was now in front, coming back from the 
hills before me. A sound, but not the same — not a 
mere echo; and yet an echo it was, the most wonder- 
ful I had ever heard. For now that great tempest of 
musical noise, composed of a multitude of clanging 
notes with long vibrations, overlapping and mingling 
and clashing together, seemed at the same time one 
and many — that tempest from the tower which had 

14 



Guide-Books: An Introduction 

mysteriously ceased to be audible came back in strokes 
or notes distinct and separate and multiplied many 
times. The sound, the echo, was distributed over 
the whole face of the steep hill before me, and was 
changed in character, and it was as if every one of 
those thousands of oak trees had a peal of bells in it, 
and that they were raining that far-up bright spiritual 
tree-music down into the valley below. As I stood 
listening it seemed to me that I had never heard any- 
thing so beautiful, nor had any man — not the monk of 
Eynsham in that vision when he heard the Easter bells 
on the holy Saturday evening, and described the sound 
as "a ringing of a marvellous sweetness, as if all 
the bells in the world, or whatsoever is of s-ound- 
ing, had been rung together at once." 

Here, then, I had found and had become the pos- 
sessor of something priceless, since in that moment 
of surprise and delight the mysterious beautiful sound, 
with the whole scene, had registered an impression 
which would outlast all others received at that place, 
where I had viewed all things with but languid in- 
terest. Had it not come as a complete surprise, the 
emotion experienced and the resultant mental image 
would not have been so vivid; as it is, I can mentally 
stand in that valley when I will, seeing that green- 
wooded hill in front of me and Hsten to that unearthly 
music. 

Naturally, after quitting the spot, I looked at the 
first opportunity into a guide-book of the district, only 
to find that it contained not one word about those 
wonderful illusive sounds ! The book-makers had 

15 



Afoot in England 

not done their work well, since it is a pleasure after 
having discovered something delightful for ourselves 
to know how others have been affected by it and how 
they describe it. 

Of many other incidents of the kind I will, in this 
chapter, relate one more, which has a historical or 
legendary interest. 

I was staying with the companion of my walks at 
a village in Southern England in a district new to us. 
We arrived on a Saturday, and next morning after 
breakfast went out for a long walk. Turning into 
the first path across the fields on leaving the village, 
we came eventually to an oak wood, which was like 
an open forest, very wild and solitary. In half an 
hour's walk among the old oaks and underwood we 
saw no sign of human occupancy, and heard nothing 
but the woodland birds. We heard, and then saw, 
the cuckoo for the first time that season, though it was 
but April the fourth. But the cuckoo was early that 
spring and had been heard by some from the middle 
of March. At length, about half-past ten o'clock, 
we caught sight of a number of people walking in a 
kind of straggling procession by a path which crossed 
ours at right angles, headed by a stout old man in a 
black smock frock and brown leggings, who carried a 
big book In one hand. One of the processionists we 
spoke to told us they came from a hamlet a mile away 
on the borders of the wood and were on their way 
to church. We elected to follow them, thinking that 
the church was at some neighbouring village; to our 
surprise we found it was in the wood, with no other 

i6 



Guide-Books: An Introduction 

building in sight — a small ancient-looking church built 
on a raised mound, surrounded by a wide shallow grass- 
grown trench, on the border of a marshy stream. 
The people went in and took their seats, while we 
remained standing just by the dooi". Then the priest 
came from the vestry, and seizing the rope vigorously, 
pulled at it for five minutes, after which he showed 
us where to sit and the service began. It was very 
pleasant there, with the door open to the sunlit forest 
and the little green churchyard without, with a willow 
wren, the first I had heard, singing his delicate little 
strain at intervals. 

The service over, we rambled an hour longer in 
the wood, then returned to our village, which had a 
church of its own, and our landlady, hearing where 
we had been, told us the story, or tradition, of the 
little church in the wood. Its origin goes very far 
back to early Norman times, when all the land in 
this part was owned by one of William's followers 
on whom- it had been bestowed. He built himself 
a house, or castle on the edge of the forest, where he 
lived with his wife and two little daughters who were 
his chief delight. It happened that one day when he 
was absent the two little girls with their female 
attendant went into the wood in search of flowers, 
and that meeting a wild boar they turned and fled, 
screaming for help. The savage beast pursued, and, 
quickly overtaking them, attacked the hindermost, the 
youngest of the two little girls, an.d killed her, the 
others escaping in the meantime. On the following 
day the father returned, and was mad with grief and 

17 



Afoot in England 

rage on hearing of the tragedy, and In his madness 
resolved to go alone on foot to the forest and search 
for the beast and taste no food or drink until he had 
slain it. Accordingly to the forest he went, and 
roamed through it by day and night, and towards 
the end of the following day he actually found and 
roused the dreadful animal, and although weakened 
by his long fast and fatigue, his fury gave him force 
to fight and conquer it, or else the powers above came 
to his aid; for when he stood spear in hand to wait 
the charge of the furious beast he vowed that if 
he overcame it on that spot he would build a chapel, 
where God would be worshipped for ever. And there 
it was raised and has stood to this day, its doors 
open every Sunday to worshippers, with but one break, 
some time in the sixteenth century to the third year 
of Elizabeth, since when there has been no suspension 
of the weekly service. 

That the tradition is not true no one can say. We 
know that the memory of an action or tragedy of a 
character to stir the feelings and impress the imagina- 
tion may live unrecorded in any locality for long 
centuries. And more, we know or suppose, from at 
least one quite familiar instance from Flintshire, that a 
tradition may even take us back to prehistoric times 
and find corroboration in our own day. 

But of this story what corroboration is there, and 
what do the books say? I have consulted the county 
history, and no mention is made of such a tradition, 
and can only assume that the. author had never heard 
it — that he had not the curious Aubrey mind. He 

i8 



Guide-Boo ks: An Introduction 

only says that it is a very early church — how early 
he does not know — and adds that it was built "for 
the convenience of the inhabitants of the place." An 
odd statement, seeing that the place has every ap- 
pearance of having always been what it is, a forest, 
and that the inhabitants thereof are weasels, foxes, 
jays and such-like, and doubtless in former days in- 
cluded wolves, boars, roe-deer and stags, beings which, 
as Walt Whitman truly remarks, do not worry them- 
selves about their souls. 

With this question, however, we need not" concern 
ourselves. To me, after stumbling by chance on the 
little church in that solitary woodland place, the story 
of its origin was accepted as true; no doubt it had 
come down unaltered from generation to generation 
through all those centuries, and it moved my pity 
yet was a delight to hear, as great perhaps as it had 
been to listen to the beautiful chimes many times 
multiplied from the wooded hill. And if I have a 
purpose in this book, which is without a purpose, a 
message" to deliver and a lesson to teach, it is only 
this — the charm of the unknown, and the infinitely 
greater pleasure in discovering the interesting things 
for ourselves than in informing ourselves of them by 
reading. It is like the difference in flavour in wild 
fruits and all wild meats found and gathered by our 
own hands in wild places and that of the same pre- 
pared and put on the table for us. The ever-varying 
aspects of nature, of earth and sea and cloud, are 
a perpetual joy to the artist, who waits and watches 
for their appearance, who knows that sun and atmos- 

19 



Afoot in England 

pherc have for him revelations without end. They 
come and go and mock his best efforts; he knows that 
his striving is in vain — that his weak hands and earthy 
pigments cannot reproduce these effects or express 
his feeling — that, as Leighton said, "every picture is 
a subject thrown away." But he has his joy none 
the less; it is in the pursuit and in the dream of captur- 
ing something illusive, mysterious, and inexpressibly 
beautiful. 



20 



Chapter Two: On Going Back 

In looking over the preceding chapter it occurred to 
me that I had omitted something, or rather that it 
would have been well to drop a word of warning to 
those who have the desire to revisit a place where 
they have experienced a delightful surprise. Alas ! 
they cannot have that sensation a second time, and 
on this account alone the mental image must always be 
better than its reality. Let the image — the first sharp 
impression — content us. Many a beautiful picture is 
spoilt by the artist who cannot be satisfied that he 
has made the best of his subject, and retouching his 
canvas to bring out some subtle charm which made the 
work a success loses it altogether. So in going back, 
the result of the inevitable disillusionment is that the 
early mental picture loses something of its original 
freshness. The very fact that the delightful place 
or scene was discovered by us made it the shining place 
it is In memory. And again, the charm we found in 
it may have been in a measure due to the mood we 
were in, or to the peculiar aspect In which it came be- 
fore us at the first, due to the season, to atmospheric 
and sunlight effects, to some human interest, or to a 
conjunction of several favourable circumstances; we 

21 



Afoot in England 

know we can never see it again in that aspect and with 
that precise feeling. 

On this account I am shy of revisiting the places 
where I have experienced the keenest delight. For 
example, I have no desire to revisit that small ancient 
town among the hills, described in the last chapter; 
to go on a Sunday evening through that narrow gorge, 
filled with the musical roar of the church bells; to 
leave that great sound behind and stand again listen- 
ing to the marvellous echo from the wooded hill on 
the other side of the valley. Nor would I care to go 
again in search of that small ancient lost church in 
the forest. It would not be early April with the clear 
sunbeams shining through the old leafless oaks on the 
floor of fallen yellow leaves with the cuckoo fluting 
before his time; nor would that straggling procession 
of villagers appear, headed by an old man in a smock 
frock with a big book in his hand; nor would I hear 
for the first time the strange history of the church 
which so enchanted me. 

I will here give an account of yet another of the 
many well-remembered delightful spots which I would 
not revisit, nor even look upon again if I could avoid 
doing so by going several miles out of my way. 

It was green open country in the west of England 
— very far west, although on the east side of the Tam- 
ar — in a beautiful spot remote from railroads and 
large towns, and the road by which I was travelling 
(on this occasion on a bicycle) ran or serpentined 
along the foot of a range of low round hills on my 
right hand, while on my left I had a green valley with 

22 



On Going Back 

other low round green hills beyond it. The valley had 
a marshy stream with sedgy margins and occasional 
clumps of alder and willow trees. It was the end of a 
hot midsummer day; the sun went down a vast globe 
of crimson fire in a crystal clear sky; and as I was 
going east I was obliged to dismount and stand still 
to watch its setting. When the great red disc had 
gone down behind the green world I resumed my way 
but went slowly, then slower still, the better to enjoy 
the delicious coolness which came from the moist 
valley and the beauty of the evening in that solitary 
place which I had never looked on before. Nor was 
there any need to hurry; I had but three or four miles 
to go to the small old town where I intended passing 
the night. By and by the winding road led me down 
close to the stream at a point where it broadened to 
a large still pool. This was the ford, and on the 
other side was a small rustic village, consisting of a 
church, two or three farm-houses with their barns 
and outbuildings, and a few ancient-looking stone 
cottages with thatched roofs. But the church was the 
main thing; it was a noble building with a very fine 
tower, and from its size and beauty I concluded that 
it was an ancient church dating back to the time when 
there was a passion in the West Country and in many 
parts of England of building these great fanes even 
in the remotest and most thinly populated parishes. 
In this I was mistaken through having seen it at a 
distance from the other side of the ford after the 
sun had set. 

Never, I thought, had I seen a lovelier village with 

23 



Afoot in England 

its old picturesque cottages shaded by ancient oaks and 
elms, and the great church with its stately tower look- 
ing dark against the luminous western sky. Dis- 
mounting again I stood for some time admiring the 
scene, wishing that I could make that village my home 
for the rest of my life, conscious at the same time 
that is was the mood, the season, the magical hour 
which made it seem so enchanting. Presently a 
young man, the first human figure that presented 
itself to my sight, appeared, mounted on a big cart- 
horse and leading a second horse by a halter, and 
rode down into the pool to bathe the animals' legs 
and give them a drink. He was a sturdy-looking 
young fellow with a sun-browned face, in earth- 
coloured, working clothes, with a small cap stuck on the 
back of his round curly head; he probably imagined 
himself not a bad-looking young man, for while his 
horses were drinking he laid over on the broad bare 
back and bending down studied his own reflection 
in the bright water. Then an old woman came out 
of a cottage close by, and began talking to' him in 
her West Country dialect in a thin high-pitched 
cracked voice. Their talking was the only sound in 
the village; so silent was it that all the rest of its 
inhabitants might have been in bed and fast asleep; 
then, the conversation ended, the young man rode out 
with a great splashing and the old woman turned into 
her cottage again, and I was left m solitude. 

Still I lingered: I could not go just yet; the 
chances were that I should never again see that sweet 
village in that beautiful aspect at the twilight hour. 

24 



On Going Back 

For now it came into my mind that I could not very 
well settle there for the rest of my life; I could 
not, in fact, tie myself to any place without sacri- 
ficing certain other advantages I possessed; and 
the main thing was that by taking root I should de- 
prive myself of the chance of looking on still other 
beautiful scenes and experiencing other sweet surprises. 
I was wishing that I had come a little earlier on the 
scene to have had time to borrow the key of the 
church and get a sight of the interior, when all at 
once I heard a shrill voice and a boy appeared run- 
ning across the wide green space of the churchyard. 
A second boy followed, then another, then still others, 
and I saw that they were going into the church by 
the side door. They were choir-boys going to prac- 
tice. The church was open then, and late as it was 
I could have half an hour inside before it was dark! 
The stream was spanned by an old stone bridge above 
the ford, and going over it I at once made my way 
to the great building, but even before entering it I 
discovered that it possessed an organ of extraordinary 
power and that someone was performing on it with 
a vengeance. Inside the noise was tremendous — a 
bigger noise from an organ, it seemed to me, than I 
had ever heard before, even at the Albert Hall and the 
Crystal Palace, but even more astonishing than the 
uproar was the sight that met my eyes. The boys, 
nine or ten sturdy little rustics with round sunburnt 
West Country faces, were playing the roughest game 
ever witnessed in a church. Some were engaged in a 
sort of flying fight, madly pursuing one another up 

25 



Afoot in Kn gland 

and down the aisles and over the pews, and whenever 
one overtook another he would seize hold of him and 
they would struggle together until one was thrown 
and received a vigorous pommelling. Those who 
were not fighting were dancing to the music. It was 
great fun to them, and they were shouting and laughing 
their loudest only not a sound of it all could be 
heard on account of the thunderous roar of the organ 
which filled and seemed to make the whole building 
tremble. The boys took no notice of me, and seeing 
that there was a singularly fine west window, I went to 
it and stood there some time with my back to the 
game which was going on at the other end of the 
building, admiring the beautiful colours and trying to 
make out the subjects depicted. In the centre part, 
lit by the after-glow in the sky to a wonderful brilli- 
ance, was the figure of a saint, a lovely young woman 
in a blue robe with an abundance of loose golden-red 
hair and an aureole about her head. Her pale face 
wore a sweet and placid expression, and her eyes of 
a pure forget-me-not blue were looking straight into 
mine. As I stood there the music, or noise, ceased 
and a very profound silence followed — not a giggle, 
not a whisper from the outrageous young barbarians, 
and not a sound of the organist or of anyone speaking 
to them. Presently I became conscious of some per- 
son standing almost but not quite abreast of me, and 
turning sharply I found a clergyman at my side. He 
was the vicar, the person who had been letting him- 
self go on the organ; a slight man with a handsome, 
pale, ascetic face, clean-shaven, very dark-eyed, look- 

36 



On Going Back 

ing more like an Italian monk or priest than an Eng- 
lish clergyman. But although rigidly ecclesiastic in 
his appearance and dress, there was something 
curiously engaging in him, along with a subtle look 
which It was not easy to fathom. There was a light 
in his dark eyes which reminded me of a flame seen 
through a smoked glass or a thin black veil, and a 
slight restless movement about the corners of his 
mouth as if a smile was just on the point of breaking 
out. But it never quite came; he kept his gravity 
even when he said things which would have gone very 
well with a smile. 

"I see," he spoke, and his penetrating musical voice 
had, too, like his eyes and mouth, an expression of 
mystery In it, "that you are admiring our beautiful 
west window, especially the figure in the centre. It 
is quite new — everything is new here — the church 
itself was only built a few years ago. This window 
is Its chief glory: it was done by a good artist — he 
has done some of the most admired windows of recent 
years; and the centre figure is supposed to be a 
portrait of our generous patroness. At all events 
she sat for it to him. You have probably heard of 
Lady Y ?" 

"What!" I exclaimed. "Lady Y— : that funny 
old woman !" 

"No — middle-aged," he corrected, a little frigidly 
and perhaps a little mockingly at the same time. 

"Very well, middle-aged if you like; I don't know 
her personally. One hears about her; but I did not 
know she had a place in* these parts." 

27 



\i 



Afoot in England 

"She owns most of this parish and has done so 
much for us that we can very well look leniently on a 
little weakness — her wish that the future Inhabitants 
of the place shall not remember her as a middle-aged 
woman not remarkable for good looks — 'funny,' as 
you just now said." 

He was wonderfully candid, I thought. But what 
extraordinary benefits had she bestowed on them, I 
asked, to enable them to regard, or to say, that this 
picture of a very beautiful young female was her 
likeness! 

"Why," he said, "the church would not have been 
built but for her. We were astonished at the sum 
she offered to contribute towards the work, and at 
once set about pulling the small old church down so 
as to rebuild on the exact site." 

"Do you know," I returned, "I can't help saying 
something you will not like to hear. It is a very fine 
church, no doubt, but It always angers me to hear of 
a case like this where some ancient church is pulled 
down and a grand new one raised In Its place to the 
honour and glory of some rich parvenu with or with- 
out a brand new title." 

"You are not hurting me in the least," he replied, 
with that change which came from time to time In 
his eyes as If the flame behind the screen had suddenly 
grown brighter. "I agree with every word you say; 
the meanest church in the land should be cherished 
as long as it will hold together. But unfortunately 
ours had to come down. It was very old and decayed 
past mending. The floor was six feet below the level 

28 



On Going Back 

of the surrounding ground and frightfully damp. It 
had been examined over and over again by experts 
during the past forty or fifty years, and from the 
first they pronounced it a hopeless case, so that it was 
never restored. The interior, right down to the 
time of demolition, was like that of most country 
churches of a century ago, with the old black worm- 
eaten pews, in which the worshippers shut themselves 
up as if in their own houses or castles. On account 
of the damp we were haunted by toads. You smile, 
sir, but it was no smiling matter for me during my 
first year as vicar, when I discovered that it was the 
custom here to keep pet toads in the church. It 
sounds strange and funny, no doubt, but it is a fact 
that all the best people in the parish had one of these 
creatures, and it was customary for the ladies to 
bring it a weekly supply of provisions — bits of meat, 
hard-boiled eggs chopped up, and earth-worms, and 
whatever else they fancied it would like — in their 
reticules. The toads, I suppose, knew when it was 
Sunday — their feeding day; at all events they would 
crawl out of their holes in the floor under the pews 
to receive their rations — and caresses. The toads got 
on my nerves with rather unpleasant consequences. 
I preached in a way which my listeners did not 
appreciate or properly understand, particularly when 
I took for my subject our duty towards the lower ani- 
mals, including reptiles." 

"Batrachians," I interposed, echoing as well as I 
could the tone in which he had rebuked me before. 

"Very well, batrachians — I am not a naturalist. 

29 



Afoot in Rn gland 

But the impression created on their minds appeared 
to be that I was rather an odd person in the pulpit. 
When the time came to pull the old church down the 
toad-keepers were bidden to remove their pets, which 
they did with considerable reluctance. What became 
of them I do not know — I never inquired. I used to 
have a careful inspection made of the floor to make 
sure that these creatures were not put back in the new 
building, and I am happy to think it is not suited 
to their habits. The floors are very well cemented, 
and are dry and clean." 

Having finished his story he invited me to go to 
the parsonage and get some refreshment. "I dare- 
say you are thirsty," he said. 

But it was getting late; it was almost dark in the 
church by now, although the figure of the golden- 
haired saint still glowed in the window and gazed 
at us out of her blue eyes. "I must not waste 
more of your time," I added. "There are your 
boys still patiently waiting to begin their practice — 
such nice quiet fellows!" 

"Yes, they are," he returned a little bitterly, a 
sudden accent of weariness in his voice and no trace 
now of what I had seen in his countenance a little 
while ago — the light that shone and brightened 
behind the dark eye and the little play about the 
corners of the mouth as of dimpling motions on the 
surface of a pool. 

And in that new guise, or disguise, I left him, the 
austere priest with nothing to suggest the whimsical 
or grotesque In his cold ascetic face. Recrossing the 

30 



On Going Back 

bridge I stood a little time and looked once more at 
the noble church tower standing dark against the 
clear amber-coloured sky, and said to myself: "Why, 
this is one of the oddest incidents of my life! Not 
that I have seen or heard anything very wonderful — 
just a small rustic village, one of a thousand in the 
land; a big new church in which some person was 
playing rather madly on the organ, a set of unruly 
choir-boys; a handsome stained-glass west window, and, 
finally, a nice little chat with the vicar." It was not in 
these things; it was a sense of something strange in 
the mind, of something in some way unhke all other 
places and people and experiences. The sensation 
was like that of the reader who becomes absorbed in 
Henry Newbolt's romance of The Old Country, who 
identifies himself with the hero and unconsciously, or 
without quite knowing how, slips back out of this 
modern world into that of half a thousand years ago. 
It is the same familiar green land in which he finds 
himself — the same old country and the same sort of 
people with feelings and habits of life and thought 
unchangeable as the colour of grass and flowers, the 
songs of birds and the smell of the earth, yet with a 
difference. I recognized it chiefly in the parish priest 
I had been conversing with; for one thing, his 
mediaeval mind evidently did not regard a sense of 
humour and of the grotesque as out of place in or on 
a sacred building. If it had been lighter I should have 
looked at the roof for an eflligy of a semi-human 
toad-like creature smiling down mockingly at the 
worshippers as they came and went. 

31 



Afoot in England 

On departing it struck me that it would assuredly 
be a mistake to return to this village and look at it 
again by the common lights of day. No, it was better 
to keep the impressions I had gathered unspoilt; 
even to believe, if I could, that no such place existed, 
but that it had existed exactly as I had found it, even 
to the unruly choir-boys, the ascetic-looking priest 
with a strange light in his eyes, and the worshippers 
who kept pet toads in the church. They were not 
precisely like people of the twentieth century. As 
for the eccentric middle-aged or elderly person whose 
portrait adorned the west window, she was not the 
lady I knew something about, but another older Lady 

Y , who flourished some six or seven centuries 

ago. 



32 



Chapter Three: Walking and 
Cycling 

We know that there cannot be progression without 
retrogression, or gain with no corresponding loss; 
and often on my wheel, when flying along the roads 
at a reckless rate of very nearly nine miles an hour, 
I have regretted that time of limitations, galling to me 
then, when I was compelled to go on foot. I am a 
walker still, but with other means of getting about I 
do not feel so native to the earth as formerly. That is 
a loss. Yet a poorer walker it would have been hard 
to find, and on even my most prolonged wanderings 
the end of each day usually brought extreme fatigue. 
This, too, although my only companion was slow — 
slower than the poor proverbial snail or tortoise — and 
I would leave her half a mile or so behind to force my 
way through unkept hedges, climb hills, and explore 
woods and thickets to converse with every bird and 
shy little beast and scaly creature I could discover. 
But mark what follows. In the late afternoon I would 
be back in the road or footpath, satisfied to go slow, 
then slower still, until the snail in woman shape would 
be obliged to slacken her pace to keep me company, 
and even to stand still at Intervals to give me need- 
ful rest. 

33 



A foot in England 

But there were compensations, and one, perhaps 
the best of all, was that this method of seeing the 
country made us more intimate with the people we 
met and stayed with. They were mostly poor people, 
cottagers in small remote villages; and we, too, were 
poor, often footsore, in need of their ministrations, 
and nearer to them on that account than if we had 
travelled in a more comfortable way. I can recall 
a hundred little adventures we met with during those 
wanderings, when we walked day after day, without 
map or guide-book as our custom was, not knowing 
where the evening would find us, but always confident 
that the people to whom it would fall in the end to 
shelter us would prove interesting to know and would 
show us a kindness that money could not pay for. 
Of these hundred little incidents let me relate one. 

It was near the end of a long summer day when we 
arrived at a small hamlet of about a dozen cottages on 
the edge of an extensive wood — a forest it is called; 
and, coming to it, we said that here we must stay, 
even if we had to spend the night sitting in a porch. 
The men and women we talked to all assured us that 
they did not know of anyone who could take us in, 
but there was Mr. Brownjohn, who kept the shop, 
and was the right person to apply to. Accordingly 
we went to the little general shop and heard that 
Mr. Brownjohn was not at home. His housekeeper, 
a fat, dark, voluble woman with prominent black eyes, 
who minded the shop in the master's absence, told us 
that Mr. Brownjohn had gone to a neighbouring 
farm-house on important business, but was expected 

34 



Walking and Cycling 

back shortly. We waited, and by and by he returned, 
a shabbily dressed, weak-looking little old man, with 
pale blue eyes and thin yellowish white hair. He 
could not put us up, he said, he had no room In his 
cottage; there was nothing for us but to go on to 
the next place, a village three miles distant, on the 
chance of finding a bed there. We assured him that 
we could go no further, and after revolving the 
matter a while longer he again said that we could not 
stay, as there was not a room to be had in the place 
since poor Mrs. Flowerdew had her trouble. She 
had a spare room and used to take in a lodger 
occasionally, and a good handy woman she was too; 
but now — no, Mrs. Flowerdew could not take us in. 
We questioned him, and he said that no one had died 
there and there had been no illness. They were all 
quite well at Mrs. Flowerdew's; the trouble was of 
another kind. There was no more to be said about it. 
As nothing further could be got out of him we went 
in search of Mrs. Flowerdew herself, and found her in 
a pretty vine-clad cottage. She was a young woman, 
very poorly dressed, with a pleasing but careworn face, 
and she had four small, bright, healthy, happy-faced 
children. They were all grouped round her as she 
stood in the doorway to speak to us, and they too were 
poorly dressed and poorly shod. When we told our 
tale she appeared ready to burst into tears. Oh, how 
unfortunate it was that she could not take us in ! It 
would have made her so happy, and the few shillings 
would have been such a blessing! But what could she 
do now — the landlord's agent had put in a distress 

35 



Afoot in England 

and carried off and sold all her best things. Every 
stick out of her nice spare room had been taken from 
them! Oh, it was cruel! 

As we wished to hear more she told us the whole 
story. They had got behindhand with the rent, but 
that had often been the case, only this time it happened 
that the agent wanted a cottage for a person he 
wished to befriend, and so gave them notice to quit. 
But her husband was a high-spirited man and deter- 
mined to stick to his rights, so he informed the agent 
that he refused to move until he received compen- 
sation for his improvements. 

Questioned about these improvements, she led us 
through to the back to show us the ground, about 
half an acre in extent, part of which was used as a 
paddock for the donkey, and on the other part there 
were about a dozen rather sickly-looking young fruit 
trees. Her husband, she said, had planted the orchard 
and kept the fence of the paddock in order, and they 
refused to compensate him ! Then she took us up 
to the spare room, empty of furniture, the floor thick 
with dust. The bed, table, chairs, washhandstand, 
toilet service — the things she had been so long strug- 
gling to get together, saving her money for months 
and months, and making so many journeys to the town 
to buy — all, all he had taken away and sold for almost 
nothing ! 

Then, actually with tears In her eyes, she said that 
now we knew why she couldn't take us in — why she 
had to seem so unkind. 

But we are going to stay, we told her. It was a 

36 



Walking and Cycling 

very good room; she could surely get a few things to 
put in it, and in the meantime we would go and forage 
for provisions to last us till Monday. 

It is odd to find how easy it is to get what one 
wants by simply taking it ! At first she was amazed 
at our decision, then she was delighted and said she 
would go out to her neighbours and try to borrow all 
that was wanted in the way of furniture and bedding. 
Then we returned to Mr. Brownjohn's to buy bread, 
bacon, and groceries, and he in turn sent us to Mr. 
Marling for vegetables. Mr. Marling heard us, and 
soberly taking up a spade and other implements led 
us out to his garden and dug us a mess of potatoes 
while we waited. In the meantime good Mrs. Flower- 
dew had not been idle, and we formed the idea that 
her neighbours must have been her debtors for unnum- 
bered little kindnesses, so eager did they now appear to 
do her a good turn. Out of one cottage a woman was 
seen coming burdened with a big roll of bedding; from 
others children issued bearing cane chairs, basin and 
ewer, and so on, and when we next looked into our 
room we found it swept and scrubbed, mats on the 
floor, and quite comfortably furnished. 

After our meal in the small parlour, which had 
been given up to us, the family having migrated into 
the kitchen, we sat for an hour by the open window 
looking out on the dim forest and saw the moon rise — 
a great golden globe above the trees — and listened 
to the reeling of the nightjars. So many were the 
birds, reeling on all sides, at various distances, that 
the evening air seemed full of their sounds, far and 

37 



Afoot in England 

near, like many low, tremulous, sustained notes blown 
on reeds, rising and falling, overlapping and mingling. 
And presently from the bushes close by, just beyond 
the weedy, forlorn little "orchard," sounded the rich, 
full, throbbing prelude to the nightingale's song, and 
that powerful melody that in its purity and brilliance 
invariably strikes us with surprise seemed to shine 
out, as it were, against the background of that diffused, 
mysterious purring of the nightjars, even as the golden 
disc of the moon shone against and above the darken- 
ing skies and dusky woods. 

And as we sat there, gazing and listening, a human 
voice came out of the night — a call prolonged and 
modulated like the coo-ee of the Australian bush, far 
off and faint; but the children in the kitchen heard it 
at the same time, for they too had been listening, and 
instantly went mad with excitement. 

"Father!" they all screamed together. "Father's 
coming!" and out they rushed and away they fled down 
the darkening road, exerting their full voices in shrill 
answering cries. 

We were anxious to see this unfortunate man, who 
was yet happy in a loving family. He had gone 
early in the morning in his donkey-cart to the little 
market town, fourteen miles away, to get the few 
necessaries they could afford to buy. Doubtless they 
would be very few. We had not long to wait, as 
the white donkey that drew the cart had put on a 
tremendous spurt at the end, notwithstanding that 
the four youngsters had climbed in to add to his 
burden. But what was our surprise to behold in the 

38 



Walking and Cycling 

charioteer a tall, gaunt, grey-faced old man with long 
white hair and beard! He must have been seventy, 
that old man with a young wife and four happy 
bright-eyed little children ! 

We could understand it better when he finally 
settled down in his corner in the kitchen and began 
to relate the events of the day, addressing his poor 
little wife, now busy darning or patching an old 
garment, while the children, clustered at his knee, 
listened as to a fairy tale. Certainly this white-haired 
man had not grown old in mind; he was keenly 
interested in all he saw and heard, and he had seen 
and heard much in the little market town that day. 
Cattle and pigs and sheep and shepherds and sheep- 
dogs; farmers, shopkeepers, dealers, publicans, tramps, 
and gentlefolks in carriages and on horseback; shops, 
too, with beautiful new things in the windows; 
millinery, agricultural implements, flowers and fruit 
and vegetables; toys and books and sweeties of all 
colours. And the people he had met on the road 
and at market, and what they had said to him 
about the weather and their business and the pros- 
pects of the year, how their wives and children were, 
and the clever jokes they had made, and his own 
jokes, which were the cleverest of all. If he had 
just returned from Central Africa or from Thibet 
he could not have had more to tell them nor told 
it with greater zest. 

We went to our room, but until the small hours 
the wind of the old traveller's talk could still be 
heard at intervals from the kitchen, mingled with 

39 



Afoot in England 

occasional shrill explosions of laughter from the lis- 
tening children. 

It happened that on the following day, spent in 
idling in the forest and about the hamlet, conversing 
with the cottagers, we were told that our old man 
was a bit of a humbug; that he was a great talker, 
with a hundred schemes for the improvement of his 
fortunes, and, incidently, for the benefit of his 
neighbours and the world at large; but nothing came 
of it all and he was now fast sinking into the lowest 
depths of poverty. Yet who would blame him? 
'Tis the nature of the gorse to be "unprofitably gay." 
All that, however, is a question for the moralist; the 
point now is that in walking, even in that poor way, 
when, on account of physical weakness, it was often 
a pain and weariness, there are alleviations which' 
may be more to us than positive pleasures, and 
scenes to delight the eye that are missed by the 
wheelman in his haste, or but dimly seen or vaguely 
surmised in passing — green refreshing nooks and 
crystal streamlets, and shadowy woodland depths with 
glimpses of a blue sky beyond — all in the wilderness 
of the human heart. 



40 



Chapter Four: Seeking a Shelter 

The "walks" already spoken of, at a time when life 
had little or no other pleasure for us on account of 
poverty and ill-health, were taken at pretty regular 
intervals two or three times a year. It all depended 
on our means ; in very lean years there was but one out- 
ing. It was impossible to escape altogether from the 
immense unfriendly wilderness of London simply be- 
cause, albeit "unfriendly," it yet appeared to be the 
only place in the wide world where our poor little 
talents could earn us a few shillings a week to live on. 
Music and literature ! but I fancy the nearest crossing- 
sweeper did better, and could afford to give himself 
a more generous dinner every day. It occasionally 
happened that an article sent to some magazine was 
not returned, and always after so many rejections to 
have one accepted and paid for with a cheque worth 
several pounds was a cause of astonishment, and 
was as truly a miracle as if the angel of the sun had 
compassionately thrown us down a handful of gold. 
And out of these little handfuls enough was some- 
times saved for the country rambles at Easter and 
Whitsuntide and in the autumn. It was during 
one of these Easter walks, when seeking for a resting- 
place for the night, that we met with another adven- 
ture worth telling. 

41 



Afoot in England 

We had got to that best part of Surrey not yet 
colonized by wealthy men from the City, but where 
all things are as they were of old, when, late in the 
day, we came to a pleasant straggling village with one 
street a mile long. Here we resolved to stay, and 
walked the length of the street making inquiries, but 
were told by every person we spoke to that the only 
place we could stay at was the inn — the "White Hart." 
When we said we preferred to stay at a cottage they 
smiled a pitying smile. No, there was no such place. 
But we were determined not to go to the inn, although 
it had a very inviting look, and was well placed with 
no other house near it, looking on the wide village 
green with ancient trees shading the road on either 
side. 

Having passed it and got to the end of the village, 
we turned and walked back, still making vain in- 
quiries, passing it again, and when once more at the 
starting-point we were in despair when we spied a 
man coming along the middle of the road and went 
out to meet him to ask the weary question for the 
last time. His appearance was rather odd as he came 
towards us on that blowy March evening with dust 
and straws flying past and the level sun shining full 
on him. He was tall and slim, with a large round 
smooth face and big pale-blue innocent-looking eyes, 
and he walked rapidly but in a peculiar jerky yet 
shambling manner, swinging and tossing his legs and 
arms about. Moving along in this disjointed manner 
in his loose fluttering clothes he put one in mind of 

42 



Seeking a Shelter, 

a big flimsy newspaper blown along the road by the 
wind. 

This unpromising-looking person at once told us 
that there was a place where we could stay; he knew 
it well, for it happened to be his father's house and 
his own home. It was away at the other end of the 
village. His people had given accommodation to 
strangers before, and would be glad to receive us 
and make us comfortable. 

Surprised, and a little doubtful of our good 
fortune, I asked my young man if he could explain 
the fact that so many of his neighbours had assured 
us that no accommodation was to be had in the 
village except at the inn. He did not make a direct 
reply. He said that the ways of the villagers were 
not the ways of his people. He and all his house 
cherished only kind feelings towards their neigh- 
bours; whether those feelings were returned or not, 
it was not for him to say. And there was some- 
thing else. A small appointment which would keep 
a man from want for the term of his natural life, 
without absorbing all his time, had become vacant in 
the village. Several of the young men in the place 
were anxious to have it; then he, too, came forward 
as a candidate, and all the others jeered at him and 
tried to laugh him out of it. He cared nothing for 
that, and when the examination came off he proved 
the best man and got the place. He had fought his 
fight and had overcome all his enemies; if they did 
not like him any the better for his victory, and did 

43 



Afoot in England 

and said little things to injure him, he did not mind 
much, he could afford to forgive them. 

Having finished his story, he said good-bye, and 
went his way, blown, as it were, along the road by 
the wind. 

We were now very curious to see the other 
members of his family; they would, we imagined, 
prove amusing, if nothing better. They proved a 
good deal better. The house we sought, for a house 
it was, stood a little way back from the street in a 
large garden. It had in former times been an inn, 
or farm-house, possibly a manor-house, and was large, 
with many small rooms, and short, narrow, crooked 
staircases, half-landings and narrow passages, and a 
few large rooms, their low ceilings resting on old 
oak beams, black as ebony. Outside, it was the most 
picturesque and doubtless the oldest house in the 
village; many-gabled, with very tall ancient chim- 
neys, the roofs of red tiles mottled grey and yellow 
with age and lichen. It was a surprise to find a wood- 
man — for that was what the man was — living in such a 
big place. The woodman himself, his appearance and 
character, gave us a second and greater surprise. He 
was a well-shaped man of medium height; although 
past middle life he looked young, and had no white 
thread in his raven-black hair and beard. His teeth 
were white and even, and his features as perfect as 
I have seen in any man. His eyes were pure dark 
blue, contrasting rather strangely with his pale olive 
skin and intense black hair. Only a woodman, but 
he might have come of one of the oldest and best 

44 



Seeking a Shelter 

families in the country, if there is any connection 
between good blood and fine features and a noble 
expression. Oddly enough, his surname was an un- 
common and aristocratic one. His wife, on the other 
hand, although a very good woman as we found, had 
a distinctly plebeian countenance. One day she in- 
formed us that she came of a different and better 
class than her husband's. She was the daughter of 
a small tradesman, and had begun life as a lady's- 
maid: her husband was nothing but a labourer; his 
people had been labourers for generations, con- 
sequently her marriage to him had involved a con- 
siderable descent in the social scale. Hearing this, 
it was hard to repress a smile. 

The contrast between this man and the ordinary 
villager of his class was as great in manners and con- 
versation as in features and expression. His com- 
bined dignity and gentleness, and apparent uncon- 
sciousness of any caste difference between man and 
man, were astonishing in one who had been a simple 
toiler all his life. 

There were some grown-up children, others grow- 
ing up, with others that were still quite small. The 
boys, I noticed, favoured their mother, and had 
commonplace faces; the girls took after their father, 
and though their features were not so perfect they 
were exceptionally good-looking. The eldest son — 
the disjointed, fly-away-looking young man who had 
conquered all his enemies — had a wife and child. 
The eldest daughter was also married, and had one 
child. Altogether the three families numbered about 

45 



Afoot in England 

sixteen persons, each family having its separate set of 
rooms, but all dining at one table. 

How did they do it? It seemed easy enough to 
them. They were serious people in a sense, although 
always cheerful and sometimes hilarious when together 
of an evening, or at their meals. But they regarded 
life as a serious matter, a state of probation; they 
were non-smokers, total abstainers, diligent at their 
work, united, profoundly religious. A fresh wonder 
came to light when I found that this poor woodman, 
with so large a family to support, who spent ten or 
twelve hours every day at his outdoor work, had yet 
been able out of his small earnings to buy bricks and 
other materials, and, assisted by his sons, to build a 
chapel adjoining his house. Here he held religious 
services on Sundays, and once or twice of an evening 
during the week. These services consisted of extem- 
pore prayers, a short address, and hymns accompanied 
by a harmonium, which they all appeared able to 
play. 

What his particular doctrine was I did not inquire, 
nor did I wish for any information on that point. 
Doubtless he was a Dissenter of some kind living in 
a village where there was no chapel; the services 
were for the family, but were also attended by a few 
of the villagers and some persons from neighbouring 
farms who preferred a simpler form of worship to that 
of the Church. 

It was not strange that this little community should 
have been regarded with something like disfavour by 
the other villagers. For these others, man for man, 

46 



Seeking a Shelter 

made just as much money, and paid less rent for their 
small cottages, and, furthermore, received doles from 
the vicar and his well-to-do parishioners, yet they 
could not better their position, much less afford the 
good clothing, books, music, and other pleasant things 
which the independent woodman bestowed on his 
family. And they knew why. The woodman's very 
presence in their midst was a continual reproach, a 
sermon on improvidence and intemperance, which 
they could not avoid hearing by thrusting their fingers 
into their ears. 

During my stay with these people something 
occurred to cause them a very deep disquiet. The 
reader will probably smile when I tell them what it 
was. Awaking one night after midnight I heard 
the unusual sound of voices in earnest conversation 
in the room below; this went on until I fell asleep 
again. In the morning we noticed that our landlady 
had a somewhat haggard face, and that the daughters 
also had pale faces, with purple marks under the eyes, 
as if they had kept their mother company in some 
sorrowful vigil. We were not left long in ignorance 
of the cause of this cloud. The good woman asked 
if we had been much disturbed by the talking. I 
answered that I had heard voices and had supposed 
that friends from a distance had arrived overnight 
and that they had sat up talking to a late hour. No 
— that was not it, she said; but someone had 
arrived late, a son who was sixteen years old, and 
who had been absent for some days on a visit to 
relations in another county. When they gathered 

47 



Afoot in England 

round him to hear his news he confessed that while 
away he had learnt to smoke, and he now wished them 
to know that he had well considere.d the matter, and 
was convinced that it was not wrong nor harmful to 
smoke, and was determined not to give up his 
tobacco. They had talked to him — father, mother, 
brothers, and sisters — using every argument they could 
find or invent to move him, until it was day and 
time for the woodman to go to his woods, and the 
others to their several occupations. But their "all- 
night sitting" had been wasted; the stubborn youth 
had not been convinced nor shaken. When, after 
morning prayers, they got up from their knees, the 
sunlight shining in upon them, they had made a last 
appeal with tears in their eyes, and he had refused 
to give the promise they asked. The poor woman 
was greatly distressed. This young fellow, I thought, 
favours his mother in features, but mentally he is 
perhaps more like his father. Being a smoker myself 
I ventured to put in a word for him. They were 
distressing themselves too much, I told her; smoking 
in moderation was not only harmless, especially to 
those who worked out of doors, but it was a well-nigh 
universal habit, and many leading men in the religious 
world, both churchmen and dissenters, were known to 
be smokers. 

Her answer, which came quickly enough, was that 
they did not regard the practice of smoking as in 
itself bad, but they knew that in some circumstances 
it was inexpedient; and in the case of her son they 
were troubled at the thought of what smoking would 

48 



Seeking a Shelter 

ultimately lead to. People, she continued, did not 
care to smoke, any more than they did to eat and 
drink, in solitude. It was a social habit, and it was 
inevitable that her boy should look for others to keep 
him company in smoking. There would be no harm 
in that in the summer-time when young people 
like to keep out of doors until bedtime; but during 
the long winter evenings he would have to look for 
his companions in the parlour of the public-house. 
And it would not be easy, scarcely possible, to sit 
long among the others without drinking a little beer. 
It is really no more wrong to drink a little beer than 
to smoke, he would say; and it would be true. One 
pipe would lead to ajiother. and one glass of beer 
to another. The habit would be formed and at last 
all his evenings and all his earnings would be spent in 
the public-house. 

She was right, and I had nothing more to say 
except to wish her success in her efforts. 

It is curious that the strongest protests against the 
evils of the village public, which one hears from 
village women, come from those who are not them- 
selves sufferers. Perhaps it is not curious. In- 
stinctively we hide our sores, bodily and mental, from 
the public gaze. 

Not long ago I was in a small rustic village in 
Wiltshire, perhaps the most charming village I have 
seen in that country. There was no inn or ale-house, 
and feeling very thirsty after my long walk I went to a 
cottage and asked the woman I saw there for a drink of 
milk. She invited me in, and spreading a clean cloth 

49 



Afoot in England 

on the table, placed a jug of new milk, a loaf, and 
butter before me. For these good things she proudly 
refused to accept payment. As she was a handsome 
young woman, with a clear, pleasant voice, I was glad 
to have her sit there and talk to me while I refreshed 
myself. Besides, I was in search of information and 
got it from her during our talk. My object in going 
to the village was to see a woman who, I had been told, 
was living there. I now heard that her cottage was 
close by, but unfortunately, while anxious to see her, I 
had no excuse for calling. 

"Do you think," said I to my young hostess, "that 
it would do to tell her that I had heard something of 
her strange history and misfortunes, and wished to 
offer her a little help? Is she very poor?" 

"Oh, no," she replied. "Please do not offer her 
money, if you see her. She would be offended. 
There is no one in this village who would take a 
shilling as a gift from a stranger. We all have 
enough; there is not a poor person among us." 

"What a happy village !" I exclaimed. "Perhaps 
you are all total abstainers." 

She laughed, and said that they all brewed their 
own beer — there was not a total abstainer among them. 
Every cottager made from fifty to eighty gallons, or 
more, and they drank beer every day, but very 
moderately, while it lasted. They were all very 
sober; their children would have to go to some neigh- 
bouring village to see a tipsy man. 

I remarked that at the next village, which had 
three public-houses, there were a good mlany persons 

50 



Seeking a Shelter 

so poor that they would gladly at any time take a 
shilling from any one. 

It was the same everywhere In the district, she said, 
except in that village which had no public-house. 
Not only were they better off, and independent of 
blanket societies and charity in all forms, but they 
were infinitely happier. And after the day's work 
the men came home to spend the evening with their 
wives and children. 

At this stage I was surprised by a sudden burst of 
passion on her part. She stood up, her face flushing 
red, and solemnly declared that if ever a public-house 
was opened in that village, and if the men took to 
spending their evenings in it, her husband with them, 
she would not endure such a condition of things — 
she wondered that so many women endured it — but 
would take her little ones and go away to earn her 
own living under some other roof! 



51 



Chapter Five: Wind^ Wave^ and 
Spirit 

The rambles I have described were mostly inland: 
when by chance they took us down to the sea our 
impressions and adventures appeared less interesting. 
Looking back on the holiday, it would seem to us a 
somewhat vacant time compared to one spent in wan- 
dering from village to village. I mean if we do not 
take into account that first impression which the sea in- 
variably makes on us on returning to it after a long ab- 
sence — the shock of recognition and wonder and joy 
as if we had been suffering from loss of memory and 
it had now suddenly come back to us. That brief 
moving experience over, there is little the sea can give 
us to compare with the land. How could it be other- 
wise in our case, seeing that we were by it in a crowd, 
our movements and way of life regulated for us in 
places which appear like overgrown and ill-organized 
convalescent homes? There was always a secret In- 
tense dislike of all parasitic and holiday places, an un- 
comfortable feeling which made the pleasure seem 
poor and the remembrance of days so spent hardly 
worth dwelling on. And as we are able to keep in or 
throw out of our minds whatever we please, being auto- 
crats In our own little kingdom, I elected to cast away 

52 



Windy Wave, and Spirit 

most of the memories of these comparatively insipid 
holidays. But not all, and of those I retain I will 
describe at least two, one In the present chapter on 
the East Anglian coast, the other later on. 

It was cold, though the month was August; it 
blew and the sky was grey and rain beginning to 
fall when we came down about noon to a small town 
on the Norfolk coast, where we hoped to find lodging 
and such comforts as could be purchased out of a 
slender purse. It was a small modern pleasure town 
of an almost startling appearance owing to the material 
used in building its straight rows of cottages and its 
ugly square houses and villas. This was an orange- 
brown stone found In the neighbourhood, the roofs 
being all of hard, black slate. I had never seen 
houses of such a colour, it was stronger, more glaring 
and aggressive than the reddest brick, and there was 
not a green thing to partially screen or soften it, nor 
did the darkness of the wet weather have any 
mitigating effect on it. The town was built on high 
ground, with an open grassy space before it sloping 
down to the cliff In which steps had been cut to give 
access to the beach, and beyond the cliff we caught 
sight of the grey, desolate, wind-vexed sea. But the 
rain was coming down more and more heavily, turning 
the streets into torrents, so that we began to envy 
those who had found a shelter even in so ugly a 
place. No one would take us in. House after house, 
street after street, we tried, and at every door with 
Apartments to Let over it where we knocked the same 
hateful landlady-face appeared with the same trium- 

53 



Afoot in England 

phant gleam in the fish-eyes and the same smile on 
the mouth that opened to tell us delightedly that she 
and the town were "full up"; that never had there 
been known such a rush of visitors; applicants were 
being turned away every hour from every door! 

After three miserable hours spent in this way we 
began inquiring at all the shops, and eventually at 
one were told of a poor woman in a small house in a 
street a good way back from the front who would 
perhaps be able to taken us in. To this place we 
went and knocked at a low door in a long blank 
wall in a narrow street; it was opened to us by a 
pale thin sad-looking woman in a rusty black gown, 
who asked us into a shabby parlour, and agreed 
to take us in until we could find something better. 
She had a gentle voice and was full of sympathy, and 
seeing our plight took us into the kitchen behind the 
parlour, which was living- and working-room as well, 
to dry ourselves by the fire. 

"The greatest pleasure in life," said once a magnifi- 
cent young athlete, a great pedestrian, to me, "is to 
rest when you are tired." And, I should add, to dry 
and warm yourself by a big fire when wet and cold, 
and to eat and drink when you are hungry and 
thirsty. All these pleasures were now ours, for very 
soon tea and chops were ready for us; and so 
strangely human, so sister-like did this quiet helpful 
woman seem after our harsh experiences on that 
rough rainy day that we congratulated ourselves 
on our good fortune in having found such a haven, 

54 



Wind, Wave, and Spirit 
and soon Informed her that we wanted no "better 
place." 

She worked with her needle to support herself and 
her one child, a little boy of ten; and by and by 
when he came in pretty wet from some outdoor 
occupation we made his acquaintance and the dis- 
covery that he was a little boy of an original character. 
He was so much to his mother, who, poor soul, had 
nobody else in the world to love, that she was always 
haunted by the fear of losing him. He was her boy, 
the child of her body, exclusively her own, unlike 
all other boys, and her wise heart told her that if she 
put him in a school he would be changed so that she 
would no longer know him for her boy. For it is 
true that our schools are factories, with a machinery 
to unmake and remake, or fabricate, the souls of 
children much in the way in which shoddy is manu- 
factured. You may see a thousand rags or garments 
of a thousand shapes and colours cast in to be boiled, 
bleached, pulled to pieces, combed and woven, and 
finally come out as a piece of cloth a thousand yards 
long of a uniform harmonious pattern, smooth, glossy, 
and respectable. His individuality gone, he would in 
a sense be lost to her; and although by nature a 
weak timid woman, though poor, and a stranger in 
a strange place, this thought, or feeling, or "ridiculous 
delusion" as most people would call it, had made her 
strong, and she had succeeded in keeping her boy 
out of school. 

Hers was an interesting story. Left alone in the 

55 



Afoot in England 

world she had married one in her own class, very 
happily as she imagined. He was in some business 
in a country town, well off enough to provide a com- 
fortable home, and he was very good; in fact, his one 
fault was that he was too good, too open-hearted and 
fond of associating with other good fellows like him- 
self, and of pledging them in the cup that cheers and at 
the same time inebriates. Nevertheless, things went 
very well for a time, until the child was born, the 
business declined, and they began to be a little 
pinched. Then it occurred to her that she, too, might 
be able to do something. She started dressmaking, 
and as she had good taste and was clever and quick, 
her business soon prospered. This pleased him; it 
relieved him from the necessity of providing for the 
home, and enabled him to follow his own inclination, 
which was to take things easily — to be an idle man, 
with a little ready money in his pocket for betting 
and other pleasures. The money was now provided 
out of "our business." This state of things con- 
tinued without any change, except that process of 
degeneration which continued in him, until the child 
was about four years old, when all at once one day 
he told her they were not doing as well as they 
might. She was giving far too much of her time 
and attention to domestic matters — to the child es- 
pecially. Business was business — a thing it was hard 
for a woman to understand — and it was impossible 
for her to give her mind properly to it with her 
thoughts occupied with the child. It couldn't be 
done. Let the child be put away, he said, and the 

56 



Wind, Wave, and Spirit 

receipts would probably be doubled. He had been 
making inquiries and found that for a modest annual 
payment the boy could be taken proper care of at a 
distance by good decent people he had heard of. 

She had never suspected such a thought in his 
mind, and this proposal had the effect of a stunning 
blow. She answered not one word: he said his say 
and went out, and she knew she would not see him 
again for many hours, perhaps not for some days; 
she knew, too, that he would say no more to her on 
the subject, that it would all be arranged about the 
child with or without her consent. His will was 
law, her wishes nothing. For she was his wife and 
humble obedient slave; never had she pleaded with 
or admonished him and never complained, even when, 
after her long day of hard work, he came in at ten 
or eleven o'clock at night with several of his pals, 
all excited with drink and noisy as himself, to call for 
supper. Nevertheless she had been happy — intensely 
happy, because of the child. The love for the man 
she had married, wondering how one so bright and 
handsome and universally admired and liked could 
stoop to her, who had nothing but love and worship 
to give in return — that love was now gone and was 
not missed, so much greater and more satisfying was 
the love for her boy. And now she must lose him ! 
Two or three silent miserable days passed by while 
she waited for the dreadful separation, until the 
thought of it became unendurable and she resolved 
to keep her child and sacrifice everything else. Secretly 
she prepared for flight, getting together the few neces- 

57 



Afoot in England 

sary things she could carry; then, with the child In 
her arms, she stole out one evening and began her 
flight, which took her all across England at its widest 
part, and ended at this( small coast town, the best 
hiding-place she could think of. 

The boy was a queer little fellow, healthy but 
colourless, with strangely beautiful, grey eyes which, 
on first seeing them, almost startled one with their 
intelligence. He was shy and almost obstinately 
silent, but when I talked to him on certain subjects 
the intense suppressed interest he felt would show 
itself in his face, and by and by it would burst out 
in speech — an impetuous torrent of words in a high 
shrill voice. He reminded me of a lark in a cage. 
Watch it in its prison when t*he sun shines forth — 
when, like the captive falcon in Dante, it is "cheated 
by a gleam" — its wing-tremblings, and all its little 
tentative motions, how the excitement grows and 
grows In it, until, although shut up and flight denied 
it, the passion can no longer be contained and it 
bursts out In a torrent of shrill and guttural sounds, 
which. If It were free and soaring, would be its song. 
His passion was all for nature, and his mother out 
of her small earnings had managed to get quite a 
number of volumes together for him. These he read 
and re-read until he knew them by heart; and on 
Sundays, or any other day they could take, those two 
lonely ones would take a basket containing their 
luncheon, her work and a book or two, and set out 
on a long ramble along the coast to pass the day in 
some solitary spot among the sandhills. 

58 



Wind, Wave, and Spirit 

With these two, the gentle woman and her quiet 
boy over his book, and the kitchen fire to warm and 
dry us after each wetting, the bad weather became 
quite bearable although it lasted many days. And it 
was amazingly bad. The wind blew with a fury 
from the sea; it was hard to walk against it. The 
people in hundreds waited in their dull apartments 
for a lull, and when it came they poured out like 
hungry sheep from the fold, or like children from a 
school, swarming over the green slope down to the 
beach, to scatter far and wide over the sands. Then, 
in a little while, a new menacing blackness would 
come up out of the sea, and by and by a fresh storm 
of wind would send the people scuttling back into 
shelter. So it went on day after day, and when night 
came the sound of the ever-troubled sea grew louder, 
so that, shut up In our little rooms in that back 
street, we had it in our ears, except at intervals, when 
the wind howled loud enough to drown its great 
voice, and hurled tempests of rain and hail against 
the roofs and windows. 

To me the most amazing thing was the spectacle 
of the swifts. It was late for them, near the end of 
August; they should now have been far away on 
their flight to Africa; yet here they were, delaying 
on that desolate east coast in wind and wet, more 
than a hundred of them. It was strange to sec so 
many at one spot, and I could only suppose that 
they had congregated previous to migration at that 
unsuitable place, and were being kept back by the 
late breeders, who had not yet been wrought up to 

59 



Afoot in England 

the point of abandoning their broods. They haunted 
a vast ruinous old barn-like building near the front, 
which was probably old a century before the town 
was built, and about fifteen to twenty pairs had their 
nests under the eaves. Over this building they 
hung all day in a crowd, rising high to come down 
again at a frantic speed, and at each descent a few 
birds could be seen to enter the holes, while others 
rushed out to join the throng, and then all rose and 
came down again and swept round and round in a furi- 
ous chase, shrieking as if mad. At all hours they drew 
me to that spot, and standing there, marvelling at 
their swaying power and the fury that possessed them, 
they appeared to me like tormented beings, and were 
like those doomed wretches in the halls of Eblis 
whose hearts were in a blaze of unquenchable fire, 
and who, every one with hands pressed to his breast, 
went spinning round in an everlasting agonized dance. 
They were tormented and crazed by the two most 
powerful instincts of birds pulling in opposite direc- 
tions — the parental instinct and the passion of mi- 
gration which called them to the south. 

In such weather, especially on that naked desolate 
coast, exposed to the fury of the winds, one marvels 
at our modern craze for the sea; not merely to come 
and gaze upon and listen to it, to renew our youth in 
its salt, exhilarating waters and to lie in delicious 
idleness on the warm shingle or mossy cliff; but to 
be always, for days and weeks and even for months, 
at all hours, in all weathers, close to it, with its 
murmur, "as of one in pain," for ever in our ears. 

60 



Windy Wave, and Spirit 

Undoubtedly it is an unnatural, a diseased, want in 
us, the result of a life too confined and artificial in 
close dirty overcrowded cities. It is to satisfy this 
craving that towns have sprung up everywhere on 
our coasts and extended their ugly fronts for miles 
and leagues, with their tens of thousands of windows 
from which the city-sickened wretches may gaze and 
gaze and listen and feed their sick souls with the 
ocean. That is to say, during their indoor hours; at 
other times they walk or sit or lie as close as they can 
to it, following the water as it ebbs and reluctantly 
retiring before it when it returns. It was not so 
formerly, before the discovery was made that the 
sea could cure us. Probably our great-grandfathers 
didn't even know they were sick; at all events, those 
who had to live in the vicinity of the sea were satisfied 
to be a little distance from it, out of sight of its 
grey desolation and, if possible, out of hearing of its 
"accents disconsolate." This may be seen anywhere 
on our coasts; excepting the seaports and fishing 
settlements, the towns and villages are almost always 
some distance from the sea, often in a hollow or at 
all events screened by rising ground and woods from 
it. The modern seaside place has, in most cases, its 
old town or village not far away but quite as near as 
the healthy ancients wished to be. 

The old village nearest to our little naked and ugly 
modern town was discovered at a distance of about 
two miles, but it might have been two hundred, so 
great was the change to its sheltered atmosphere. 
Loitering in its quiet streets among the old picturesque 

6i 



Afoot in England 

brick houses with tiled or thatched roofs and tall 
chimneys — ivy and rose and creeper-covered, with a 
background of old oaks and elms — I had the sen- 
sation of having come back to my own home. In that 
still air you could hear men and women talking fifty 
or a hundred yards away, the cry or laugh of a child 
and the clear crowing of a cock, als*o the smaller aerial 
sounds of nature, the tinkling notes of tits and other 
birdlings in the trees, the twitter of swallows and 
martins, and the "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain." 
It was sweet and restful in that home-like place, and 
hard to leave it to go back to the front to face the 
furious blasts once more. B.ut there were compensa- 
tions. 

The little town, we have seen, was overcrowded 
with late summer visitors, all eager for the sea yet 
compelled to waste so much precious time shut up in 
apartments, and at every appearance of a slight im- 
provement in the weather they would pour out of the 
houses and the green slope would be covered with a 
crowd of many hundreds, all hurrying down to the 
beach. The crowd was composed mostly of women — 
about three to every man, I should say — and their 
children; and it was one of the most interesting 
crowds I had ever come across on account of the large 
number of persons in it of a peculiarly fine type, which 
chance had brought together at that spot. It was the 
large English blonde, and there were so many individ- 
uals of this type that they gave a character to the crowd 
so that those of a different physique and colour ap- 
peared to be fewer than they were and were almost 

62 



Wind, Wave, and Spirit 

Overlooked. They came from various places about the 
country, in the north and the Midlands, and appeared 
to be of the well-to-do classes; they, or many of them, 
were with their families but without their lords. They 
were mostly tall and large in every way, very white- 
skinned, with light or golden hair and large light blue 
eyes, A common character of these women was their 
quiet reposeful manner; they walked and talked and 
rose up and sat down and did everything, in fact, with 
an air of deliberation; they gazed in a slow steady way 
at you, and were dignified, some even majestic, and 
were like a herd of large beautiful white cows. The 
children, too, especially the girls, some almost as tall as 
their large mothers, though still in short frocks, were 
very fine. The one pastime of these was paddling, 
and it was a delight to see their bare feet and legs. 
The legs of those who had been longest on the spot — 
probably several weeks in some instances — were of a 
deep nutty brown hue suffused with pink; after these 
a gradation of colour, light brown tinged with buff, 
pinkish buff and cream, like the Gloire de Dijon rose; 
and so on to the delicate tender pink of the clover 
blossom; and, finally, the purest ivory white of the 
latest arrivals whose skins had not yet been caressed 
and coloured by sun and wind. 

How beautiful are the feet of these girls by the sea 
who bring us glad tidings of a better time to come and 
the day of a nobler courage, a freer larger life when 
garments which have long oppressed and hindered 
shall have been cast away! 

It was, ~ as I have said, mere chance which had 

63 



Afoot in England 

brought so many persons of a particular type 
together on this occasion, and I thought I might go 
there year after year and never see the like again. 
As a fact I did return when August came round and 
found a crowd of a different character. The type 
was there but did not predominate: it was no longer 
the herd of beautiful white and strawberry cows with 
golden horns and large placid eyes. Nothing in fact 
was the same, for when I looked for the swifts there 
were no more than about twenty birds instead of over 
a hundred, and although just on the eve of de- 
parture they were not behaving in the same excited 
manner. 

Probably I should not have thought so much about 
that particular crowd in that tempestuous August, 
and remembered it so vividly, but for the presence of 
three persons in it and the strange contrast they made 
to the large white type I have described. These 
were a woman and her two little girls, aged about 
eight and ten respectively, but very small for their 
years. She was a little black-haired and black-eyed 
woman with a pale sad dark face, on which some 
great grief or tragedy had left its shadow; very quiet 
and subdued in her manner; she would sit on a 
chair on the beach when the weather permitted, a 
book on her knees, while her two little ones played 
about, chasing and flying from the waves, or with the 
aid of their long poles vaulting from rock to rock. 
They were dressed in black frocks and scarlet 
blouses, which set off their beautiful small dark 

64 



Wind, WavCy and spirit 

faces; their eyes sparkled like black diamonds, and 
their loose hair was a wonder to see, a black mist 
or cloud about their heads and necks composed of 
threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet and shining 
like spun glass — hair that looked as if no comb or 
brush could ever tame its beautiful wildness. And 
in spirit they were what they seemed: such a wild, 
joyous, frolicsome spirit with such grace and fleetness 
one does not look for in human beings, but only in 
birds or in some small bird-like volatile mammal — 
a squirrel or a marmoset of the tropical forest, 
or the chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes, 
the swiftest, wildest, loveliest, most airy and most 
vocal of small beasties. Occasionally to watch their 
wonderful motions more closely and have speech 
with them, I followed when they raced over the 
sands or flew about over the slippery rocks, and felt 
like a cochin-china fowl, or muscovy duck, or dodo, 
trying to keep pace with a humming-bird. Their 
voices were well suited to their small brilliant forms; 
not loud, though high-pitched and singularly musical 
and penetrative, like the high clear notes of a skylark 
at a distance. They also reminded me of certain 
notes, which have a human quality, in some of our 
songsters — the swallow, redstart, pied wagtail, whin- 
chat, and two or three others. Such pure and 
beautiful sounds are sometimes heard in human 
voices, chiefly in children, when they are talking and 
laughing in joyous excitement. But for any sort of 
conversation they were too volatile; before I could 

65 



Afoot in England 

get a dozeh words from them they would be off 
again, flying and flitting along the margin, like sand- 
pipers, and beating the clear-voiced sandpiper at his 
own aerial graceful game. 

By and by I was favoured with a fine exhibition 
of the spirit animating these two little things. The 
weather had made it possible for the crowd of visitors 
to go down and scatter itself aver the beach, when 
the usual black cloud sprang up and soon burst on us 
in a furious tempest of wind and rain, sending the 
people flying back to the shelter of a large structure 
erected for such purposes against the cliff. It was a 
vast barn-like place, open to the front, the roof 
supported by wooden columns, and here in a few 
minutes some three or four hundred persons were 
gathered, mostly women and their girls, white and 
blue-eyed with long wet golden hair hanging down 
their backs. Finding a vacant place on the bench, I 
sat down next to a large motherly-looking woman 
with a robust or dumpy blue-eyed girl about four or 
five years old on her lap. Most of the people were 
standing about in groups waiting for the storm to 
blow over, and presently I noticed my two wild- 
haired dark little girls moving about in the crowd. 
It was impossible not to seen them, for they could 
not keep still a moment. They were here, there, and 
everywhere, playing hide-and-seek and skipping 
and racing wherever they could find an opening, and 
by and by, taking hold of each other, they started 
dancing. It was a pretty spectacle, but most in- 
teresting to see was the effect produced on the other 

66 



Windy Wave, and Spirit 

children, the hundred girls, big and little, the little 
ones especially, who had been standing there tired 
and Impatient to get out to the sea, and who were 
now becoming more and more excited as they gazed, 
until, like children when listening to lively music, 
they began moving feet and hands and soon their 
whole bodies in time to the swift movements of the 
little dancers. At last, plucking up courage, first 
one, then another, joined them, and were caught as 
they came and whirled round and round in a manner 
quite new to them and which they appeared to find 
very delightful. By and by I observed that the 
little rosy-faced dumpy girl on my neighbour's knees 
was taking the infection; she was staring, her blue 
eyes opened to their widest in wonder and delight. 
Then suddenly she began pleading, "Oh, mummy, 
do let me go to the little girls — oh, do let me !" 
And her mother said "No," because she was so little, 
and could never fly round like that, and so would 
fall and hurt herself and cry. But she pleaded still, 
and was ready to cry if refused, until the good 
anxious mother was compelled to release her; and 
down she slipped, and after standing still with her 
little arms and closed hands held up as if to collect 
herself before plunging Into the new tremendous 
adventure, she rushed out towards the dancers. One 
of them saw her coming, and instantly quitting the 
child she was waltzing with flew to meet her, and 
catching her round the middle began spinnln^g her 
about as if the solid little thing weighed no more 
than a feather. But it proved too much for her; 

67 



Afoot in England 

very soon she came down and broke Into a loud cry, 
which brought her mother instantly to her, and she 
was picked up and taken back to the seat and held 
to the broad bosom and soothed with caresses and 
tender words until the sobs began to subside. Then, 
even before the tears were dry, her eyes were once 
more gazing at the tireless little dancers, taking on 
child after child as they came timidly forward to have 
a share in the fun, and once more she began to plead 
with her "mummy," and would not be denied, for 
she was a most determined little Saxon, until getting 
her way she rushed out for a second trial. Again 
the little dancer saw her coming and flew to her like 
a bird to its mate, and clasping her laughed her 
merry musical little laugh. It was her "sudden 
glory," an expression of pure 'delight in her power 
to infuse her own fire and boundless gaiety of soul 
into all these little blue-eyed rosy phlegmatic lumps 
of humanity. 

What was it in these human mites, these fantastic 
Brownies, which, in that crowd of Rowenas and their 
children, made them seem like beings not only of 
another race, but of another species? How came 
they alone to be distinguished among so many by 
that irresponsible gaiety, as of the most volatile of 
wild creatures, that quickness of sense and mind and 
sympathy, that variety and grace and swiftness — all 
these brilliant exotic qualities harmoniously housed 
in their small beautiful elastic and vigorous frames? 
It was their genius, their character — something 
derived from their race. But what race? Looking 

68 



Wind, WavCy and Spirit 

at their mother watching her little ones at their frolics 
with dark shining eyes — the small oval-faced brown- 
skinned woman with blackest hair — I could but say 
that she was an Iberian, pure and simple, and that 
her children were like her. In Southern Europe that 
type abounds; it is also to be met with throughout 
Britain, perhaps most common in the southern coun- 
ties, and it is not uncommon in East Anglia. Indeed, 
I think it is in Norfolk where we may best see the 
two most marked sub-types in which it is divided — 
the two extremes. The small stature, narrow head, 
dark skin, black hair and eyes are common to both, 
and in both these physical characters are correlated 
with certain mental traits, as, for instance, a peculiar 
vivacity and warmth of disposition; but they are 
high and low. In the latter sub-division the skin is 
coarse in texture, brown or old parchment in colour, 
with little red in it; the black hair is also coarse, the 
forehead small, the nose projecting, and the facial 
angle indicative of a more primitive race. One 
might imagine that these people had been interred, 
along with specimens of rude pottery and bone and 
flint implements, a long time back, about the begin- 
ning of the Bronze Age perhaps, and had now come 
out of their graves and put on modern clothes. At 
all events I don't think a resident in Norfolk would 
have much difficulty in picking out the portraits of 
some of his fellow-villagers in Mr. Reed's Prehistoric 
Peeps. 

The mother and her little ones were of the higher 
sub-type: they had delicate skins, beautiful faces, 

69 



Afoot in England 

clear musical voices. They were Iberians in blood, 
but improved; purified and refined as by fire; 
gentleized and spiritualized, and to the lower types 
down to the aboriginals, as is the bright consummate 
flower to leaf and stem and root. 

Often and often we are teased and tantalized and 
mocked by that old question: 

Oh ! so old- 
Thousands of years, thousands of years, 
If all were told — 

of black and blue eyes; blue versus black and black 
versus blue, to put it both ways. And by black we 
mean black with orange-brown lights in it — the eye 
called tortoiseshell; and velvety browns with other 
browns, also hazels. Blue includes all blues, from 
ultramarine, or violet, to the palest blue of a pale 
sky; and all greys down to the grey that is almost 
white. Our preference for this or that colour is 
supposed to depend on nothing but individual taste, 
or fancy, and association. I believe it is something 
more, but I do find that we are very apt to be swayed 
this way and that by the colour of the eyes of the 
people we meet in life, according as they (the people) 
attract or repel us. The eyes of the two little girls 
were black as polished black diamonds until looked 
at closely, when they appeared a beautiful deep brown 
on which the black pupils were seen distinctly; they 
were so lovely that I, predisposed to prefer dark to 
light, felt that this question was now definitely settled 
for me — that black was best. That irresistible charm, 

70 



Wind, Wave, and Spirit 

the flame-like spirit which raised these two so much 
above the others — how could it go with anything but 
the darkest eyes ! 

But no sooner was the question thus settled 
definitely and for all time, to my very great satis- 
faction, than it was unsettled again. I do not know 
how this came about; it may have been the sight of 
some small child's blue eyes looking up at me, like 
the arch blue eyes of a kitten, full of wonder at the 
world and everything in it; 

"Where did you get those eyes so blue?" 
"Out of the sky as I came through" ; 

or it may have been the sight of a harebell; and 
perhaps it came from nothing but the "waste shining 
of the sky." At all events, there they were, remem- 
bered again, looking at me from the past, blue eyes 
that were beautiful and dear to me, whose blue colour 
was associated with every sweetness and charm in 
child and woman and with all that is best and highest 
in human souls; and I could not and had no wish to 
resist their appeal. 

Then came a new experience of the eye that is blue 
— a meeting with one who almost seemed to be less 
flesh than spirit. A middle-aged lady, frail, very 
frail; exceedingly pale from long ill-health, prema- 
turely white-haired, with beautiful grey eyes, gentle 
but wonderfully bright. Altogether she was like a 
being compounded as to her grosser part of foam and 
mist and gossamer and thistledown, and was swayed 
by every breath of air, and who, should she venture 

71 



Afoot in England 

abroad in rough weather, would be lifted and bloAOi 
away by the gale and scattered like mist over the 
earth. Yet she, so frail, so timid, was the one 
member of the community who had set herself to do 
the work of a giant — that of championing all ill-used 
and suffering creatures, wild or tame, holding a pro- 
tecting shield over them against the innate brutality 
of the people. She had been abused and mocked and 
jeered at by many, while others had regarded her 
action with an amused smile or else with a cold 
indifference. But eventually some, for very shame, 
had been drawn to her side, and a change in the feel- 
ing of the people had resulted; domestic animals 
were treated better, and it was no longer universally 
believed that all wild animals, especially those with 
wings, existed only that men might amuse themselves 
by killing and wounding and trapping and caging and 
persecuting them in various other ways. 

The sight of that burning and shining spirit in its 
frail tenement — for did I not actually see her spirit 
and the very soul of her in those eyes? — was the last 
of the unforgotten experiences I had at that place 
which had startled and repelled me with its ugliness. 

But, no, there was one more, marvellous as any — 
the experience of a day of days, one of those rare 
days when nature appears to us spiritualized and is no 
longer nature, when that which had transfigured this 
visible world is in us too, and it becomes possible to 
believe — it is almost a conviction — that the burning 
and shining spirit seen and recognized in one among 
a thousand we have known is in all of us and in all 

72 



Wind, Wave, and Spirit 

things. In such moments it is possible to go beyond 
even the most advanced of the modern physicists who 
hold that force alone exists, that matter is but a 
disguise, a shadow and delusion; for we may add 
that force itself — that which we call force or energy 
— is but a semblance and shadow of the universal soul. 
The change in the weather was not sudden; the 
furious winds dropped gradually; the clouds floated 
higher in the heavens, and were of a lighter grey; 
there were wider breaks in them, showing the lucid 
blue beyond; and the sea grew quieter. It had raved 
and roared too long, beating against the iron walls 
that held it back, and was now spent and fallen into 
an uneasy sleep, but still moved uneasily and moaned 
a little. Then all at once summer returned, coming 
like a thief in the night, for when it was morning the 
sun rose in splendour and power in a sky without 
a cloud on its vast azure expanse, on a calm sea 
with no motion but that scarcely perceptible rise and 
fall as of one that sleeps. As the sun rose higher the 
air grew warmer until it was full summer heat, but 
although a "visible heat," it was never oppressive; 
for all that day we were abroad, and as the tide ebbed 
a new country that was neither earth nor sea was 
disclosed, an infinite expanse of pale yellow sand 
stretching away on either side, and further and further 
out until it mingled and melted into the sparkling 
water and faintly seen line of foam on the horizon. 
And over all — the distant sea, the ridge of low dunes 
marking where the earth ended and the flat, yellow 
expanse between — there brooded a soft bluish silvery 

73 



Afoot in England 

haze. A haze that blotted nothing out, but blended 
and interfused them all until earth and air and sea 
and sands were scarcely distinguishable. The effect, 
delicate, mysterious, unearthly, cannot be described. 

Ethereal gauze . . . 
Visible heat, air — water, and dry sea, 
Last conquest of the eye . . . 

Sun dust, 
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth. 
Ethereal estuary, frith of light. . . . 
Bird of the sun, transparent winged. 

Do we not see that words fail as pigments do — that 
the effect is too coarse, since in describing it we put 
it before the mental eye as something distinctly visible, 
a thing of itself and separate. But it is not so in 
nature; the effect is of something almost invisible 
and is yet a part of all and makes all things — sky and 
sea and land — as unsubstantial as itself. Even living, 
moving things had that aspect. Far out on the lowest 
further strip of sand, which appeared to be on a 
level with the sea, gulls were seen standing in twos 
and threes and small groups and in rows; but they 
did not look like gulls — familiar birds, gull-shaped 
with grey and white plumage. They appeared twice 
as big as gulls, and were of a dazzling whiteness and 
of no definite shape: though standing still they had 
motion, an effect of the quivering dancing air, the 
"visible heat"; at rest, they were seen now as separate 
objects; then as one with the silver sparkle on the 

74 



Wind, Wave, and Spirit 

sea; and when they rose and floated away they were 
no longer shining and white, but like pale shadows of 
winged forms faintly visible in the haze. 

They were not birds but spirits — beings that lived 
in or were passing through the world and now, like 
the heat, made visible; and I, standing far out on the 
sparkling sands, with the sparkling sea on one side 
and the line of dunes, indistinctly seen as land, on 
the other, was one of them; and if any person had 
looked at me from a distance he would have seen me 
as a formless shining white being standing by the sea, 
and then perhaps as a winged shadow floating in the 
haze. It was only necessary to put out one's arms 
to float. That was the effect on my mind: this 
natural world was changed to a supernatural, and 
there was no more matter nor force in sea or land 
nor in the heavens above, but only. spirit. 



75 



Chapter Six: By Swallowfield 

One of the most attractive bits of green and wooded 
country near London I know lies between Reading 
and Basingstoke and includes Aldermaston with its im- 
memorial oaks in Berkshire and Silchester with Pam- 
ber Forest in Hampshire. It has long been one of my 
favourite haunts, summer and winter, and it is perhaps 
the only wooded place in England where I have a home 
feeling as strong as that which I experience in certain 
places among the South Wiltshire downs and in the ab- 
solutely flat country on the Severn, in Somerset, and 
the flat country in Cambridgeshire and East Anglia, 
especially at Lynn and about Ely, 

I am now going back to my first visit to this green 
retreat; it was in the course of one of those Easter 
walks I have spoken of, and the way was through 
Reading and by Three Mile Cross and Swallowfield. 
On this occasion I conceived a dislike to Reading which 
I have never quite got over, for it seemed an uncon- 
scionably big place for two slow pedestrians to leave 
behind. Worse still, when we did leave it we found 
that Reading would not leave us. It was like a 
stupendous octopus in red brick which threw out red 
tentacles, miles and miles long in various directions — 
little rows and single and double cottages and villas, 
all in red, red brick and its weary accompaniment, the 

76 



By Swallowfield 

everlasting hard slate roof. These square red brick 
boxes with sloping slate tops are built as close as 
possible to the public road, so that the passer-by by 
looking in at the windows may see the whole interior 
— wall-papers, pictures, furniture, and oftentimes the 
dull expressionless face of the woman of the house, 
staring back at you out of her shallow blue eyes. 
The weather too was against us; a grey hard sky, like 
the slate roofs, and a cold strong east wind to make the 
road dusty all day long. 

Arrived at Three Mile Cross, it was no surprise to 
find it no longer recognizable as the hamlet described 
in Our Village, but it was saddening to look at the 
cottage in which Mary Russell Mitford lived and was 
on the whole very happy with her flowers and work 
for thirty years of her life, in its present degraded 
state. It has a sign now and calls itself the "Mitford 
Arms" and a "Temperance Hotel," and we were told 
that you could get tea and bread and butter there but 
nothing else. The cottage has been much altered 
since Miss Mitford's time, and the open space once 
occupied by the beloved garden is now filled with 
buildings, including a corrugated-iron dissenting 
chapel. 

From Three Mile Cross we walked on to Swallow- 
field, still by those never-ending roadside red-brick 
cottages and villas, for we were not yet properly out 
of the hated biscuit metropolis. It was a big village 
with the houses scattered far and wide over several 
square miles of country, but just where the church 
stands it is shady and pleasant. The pretty church- 

77 



Afoot in England 

yard too Is very deeply shaded and occupies a small 
hill with the Loddon flowing partly round it, then 
taking its swift way through the village. Miss 
Mitford's monument is a plain, almost an ugly, granite 
cross, standing close to the wall, shaded by yew, elm, 
and beech trees, and one is grateful to think that if she 
never had her reward when living she has found at 
any rate a very peaceful resting-place. 

The sexton was there and told us that he was but 
ten years old when Miss Mitford died, but that he 
remembered her well and she was a very pleasant 
little woman. Others in the place who remembered 
her said the same — that she was very pleasant and 
sweet. We know that she was sweet and charming, 
but unfortunately the portraits we have of her do not 
give that impression. They represent her as a fat 
common-place looking person, a little vulgar perhaps. 
I fancy the artists were bunglers. I possess a copy of 
a very small pencil sketch made of her face by a dear 
old lady friend of mine, now dead, about the year 
185 I or 2. My friend had a gift for portraiture in a 
peculiar way. When she saw a face that greatly inter- 
ested her, in a drawing-room, on a platform, in the 
street, anywhere, it remained very vividly in her mind 
and on going home she would sketch it, and some of 
these sketches of well known persons are wonderfully 
good. She was staying in the country with a friend 
who drove with her to Swallowfield to call on Miss 
Mitford, and on her return to her friend's house she 
made the little sketch, and in this tiny portrait I can 

78 



By Swallowfield 

see the refinement, the sweetness, the animation and 
charm which she undoubtedly possessed. 

But let me now venture to step a little outside of 
my own province, my small plot — a poor pedestrian's 
unimportant impressions of places and faces; — all 
these p's come by accident; and this I put in 
parenthetically just because an editor solemnly told 
me a while ago that he couldn't abide and wouldn't 
have alliteration's artful aid in his periodical. Let 
us leave the subject of what Miss Mitford was to 
those of her day who knew her; a thousand lovely 
personalities pass away every year and in a little 
while are no more remembered than the bright- 
plumaged bird that falls In the tropical forest, or the 
vanished orchid bloom of which some one has said 
that the angels in heaven can look on no more 
beautiful thing. Leaving all that, let us ask what 
remains to us of another generation of all she was 
and did? 

She was a prolific writer, both prose and verse, 
and, as we know, had an extraordinary vogue in her 
own time. Anything that came from her pen had 
an immediate success; indeed, so highly was she 
regarded that nothing she chose to write, however 
poor, could fail. And she certainly did write a good 
deal of poor stuff: it was all in a sense poor, but 
books and books, poor soul, she had to write. It 
was in a sense poor because it was mostly ambitious 
stuff, and, as the proverb says, "You cannot fly like 
an eagle with the wings of a wren." She was driven 

79 



Afoot in England 

to fly, and gave her little wings too much to do, and 
her flights were apt to be mere little weak flutterings 
over the surface of the ground. A wren, and she 
had not a cuckoo but a devouring cormorant to sus- 
tain — that dear, beautiful father of hers, who was 
more to her than any reprobate son to his devoted 
mother, and who day after day, year after year, 
gobbled up her earnings, and then would hungrily 
go on squawking for more until he stumbled into the 
grave. Alas! he was too long in dying; she was 
worn out by then, the little heart beating not so fast, 
and the bright little brain growing dim and very tired. 
Now all the ambitious stuff she wrote to keep the 
cormorant and, incidentally, to immortalize herself, 
has fallen deservedly into oblivion. But we — some 
of us — do not forget and never want to forget Mary 
Russell Mitford. Her letters remain — the little 
friendly letters which came from her pen like balls 
of silvery down from a sun-ripened plant, and were 
wafted far and wide over the land to those she loved. 
There is a wonderful charm in them; they are so 
spontaneous, so natural, so perfectly reflect her hu- 
mour and vivacity, her overflowing sweetness, .her 
beautiful spirit. And one book too remains — the se- 
ries of sketches about the poor little hamlet, in which 
she lived so long and laboured so hard to support her- 
self and her parents, the turtledove mated with a cor- 
morant. Driven to produce work and hard up for 
a subject, In a happy moment she took up this humble 
one lying at her own door and allowed her self to 

80 



By Swallowfield 

write naturally even as in her most intimate letters. 
This is the reason of the vitality of Otir Village; It 
was simple, natural, and reflected the author herself, 
her tender human heart, her Impulsive nature, her 
bright playful humorous spirit. There Is no thought, 
no mind stuff In it, and it Is a classic! It is about 
the country, and she has so 'little observation that it 
might have been written in a town, out of a book, 
away from nature's sights and sounds. Her rustic 
characters are not comparable to those of a score or 
perhaps two or three score of other writers who treat 
of such subjects. The dialogue, when she makes 
them talk, is unnatural, and her invention so poor 
that when she puts in a little romance of her own 
making one regrets It. And so one might go on 
picking It all to pieces like a dandelion blossom. 
Nevertheless It endures, outliving scores of in a way 
better books on the same themes, because her own 
delightful personality manifests itself and shines in 
all these little pictures. This short passage describing 
how she took Lizzie, the little village child she loved, 
to gather cowslips in the meadows, will serve as an 
illustration. 

They who know these feelings (and who is so 
happy as not to have known some of them) will 
understand why Alfieri became powerless, and 
Frolssart dull; and why even needlework, the 
most effective sedative, that grand soother and 
composer of women's distress, fails to comfort me 
today. I will go out into the air this cool, 

8i 



Afoot in England 

pleasant afternoon, and try what that will do. . . . 
I win go to the meadows, the beautiful meadows ! 
and I win have my materials of happiness, Lizzie 
and May, and a basket for flowers, and we will 
make a cowslip ball. "Did you ever see a cow- 
slip ball, Lizzie?" "No." "Come away then; 
make haste! run, Lizzie!" 

And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across 
the lea, past the workhouse, along by the great 
pond, till we slide Into the deep narrow lane, whose 
hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our 
way to the little farmhouse at the end. "Through 
the farmyard, Lizzie; over the gate; never mind 
the cows; they are quiet enough." "I don't mind 
'em," said Miss Lizzie, boldly and truly, and with 
a proud affronted air, displeased at being thought 
to mind anything, and showing by her attitude and 
manner some design of proving her courage by an 
attack on the largest of the herd. In the shape of a 
pull by the tail. "I don't mind 'em." "I know 
you don't, Lizzie; but let them, alone and don't 
chase the turkey-cock. Come to me, my dear!" 
and, for wonder, Lizzie came. 

In the meantime my other pet, Mayflower, had 
also gotten Into a scrape. She had driven about a 
huge unwieldy sow, till the animal's grunting had 
disturbed the repose of a still more enormous New- 
foundland dog, the guardian of the yard. 
The beautiful white greyhound's mocking treat- 
ment of the surly dog on the chain then follows, and 

82 



By Swallowfield 

other pretty scenes and adventures, until after some 
mishaps and much trouble the cowslip ball is at length 
completed. 

What a concentration of fragrance and beauty 
it was ! Golden and sweet to satiety ! rich in 
sight, and touch, and smell ! Lizzie was enchanted, 
and ran off with her prize, hiding amongst the 
trees in the very coyness of ecstasy, as if any 
human eye, even mine, would be a restraint on 
her innocent raptures. 
Here the very woman is revealed to us, her tender 
and lively disposition, her impulsiveness and child- 
like love of fun and delight in everything on earth. 
We see in such a passage what her merit really is, the 
reason of our liking or "partiality" for her. Hfer 
pleasuje in everything makes everything interesting, 
and in displaying her feeling without art or disguise 
she succeeds in giving what we may call a literary 
expression to personal charm — that quality which is 
almost untranslatable into written words. Many 
women possess it; it is in them and issues from 
them, and is like an essential oil in a flower, but too 
volatile to be captured and made use of. Further- 
more, women when they write are as a rule even 
more conventional than men, more artificial and out 
of and away from themselves. 

I do not know that any literary person will agree 
with me; I have gone aside to write about Miss 
Mitford mainly for my own satisfaction. Frequently 
when I have wanted to waste half an hour pleasantly 

83 



Afoot in Kn gland 

with a book I have found myself picking up Our 
Village from among many others, some waiting for a 
first perusal, and I wanted to know why this was so 
— to find out, if not to invent, some reason for my 
liking which would not make me ashamed. 

At Swallowfield we failed to find a place to stay at; 
there was no such place; and of the inns, named, 
I think, the "Crown," "Cricketers," "Bird-in-the- 
Hand," and "George and Dragon," only one was 
said to provide accommodation for travellers as the 
law orders, but on going to the house we were in- 
formed that the landlord or his wife was just dead, 
or dangerously ill, I forget which, and they could 
take no one in. Accordingly, we had to trudge back 
to Three Mile Cross and the old ramshackle, well- 
nigh ruinous inn there. It was a wretched place, 
smelling of mould and dry-rot; however, it was not 
so bad after a fire had been lighted in the grate, but 
first the young girl who waited on us brought in a 
bundle of newspapers, which she proceeded to thrust 
up the chimney-flue and kindle, "to warm the flue 
and make the fire burn," she explained. 

On the following day, the weather being milder, 
we rambled on through woods and lanes, visiting 
several villages, and arrived in the afternoon at Sil- 
chester, where we had resolved to put up for the 
night. By a happy chance we found a pleasant 
cottage on the common to stay at and pleasant people 
in it, so that we were glad to sit down for a week 
there, to loiter about the furzy waste, or prowl in 
the forest and haunt the old walls; but it was 

84 



By Swallowfield 

pleasant even Indoors with that wide prospect before 
the window, the wooded country stretching many 
miles away to the hills of Kingsclere, blue in the 
distance and crowned with their beechcn rings and 
groves. Of Roman Calleva itself and the thoughts 
I had there I will write in the following chapter; 
here I will only relate how on Easter Sunday, two 
days after arriving, we went to morning service in 
the old church standing on a mound Inside the walls, 
a mile from the village and common. 

It came to pass that during the service the sun 
began to shine very brightly after several days of 
cloud and misty windy wet weather, and that bril- 
liance and the warmth in It served to bring a 
butterfly out of hiding; then another; then a third; 
red admirals all; and they were seen through all the 
prayers, and psalms, and hymns, and lessons, and 
the sermon preached by the white-haired Rector, 
fluttering against the translucent glass, wanting to be 
out in that splendour and renew their life after so 
long a period of suspension. But the glass was between 
them and their world of blue heavens and woods 
and meadow flowers; then I thought that after the 
service I would make an attempt to get them out; 
but soon reflected that to release them it would be 
necessary to capture them first, and that that could not 
be done without a ladder and butterfly net. Among 
the women (ladles) on either side of and before me 
there were no fewer than five wearing aigrettes of 
egret and bird-of-paradise plumes in their hats or 
bonnets, and these five all remained to take part in 

85 



Afoot in Rn gland 

that ceremony of eating bread and drinking wine in 
remembrance of an event supposed to be of impor- 
tance to their souls, here and hereafter. It saddened 
me to leave my poor red admirals in their prison, 
beating their red wings against the coloured glass — 
to leave them too in such company, where the aigrette 
wearers were worshipping a little god of their own 
little imaginations, who did not create and does not 
regard the swallow and dove and white egret and 
bird-of-paradise, and who was therefore not my god 
and whose will as they understood it was nothing 
to me. 

It was a consolation when I went out, still thinking 
of the butterflies in their prison, and stood by the 
old ruined walls grown over with ivy and crowned 
with oak and holly trees, to think that in another two 
thousand years there will be no archaeologist and no 
soul in Silchester, or anywhere else in Britain, or in 
the world, who would take the trouble to dig up the 
remains of aigrette-wearers and their works, and who 
would care what had become of their pitiful little 
souls — their immortal part. 



86 



Chapter Seven: Roman Calleva 

An afternoon in the late November of 1903. Frost, 
gales, and abundant rains have more than half stripped 
the oaks of their yellow leaves. But the rain is over 
now, the sky once more a pure lucid blue above me — all 
around me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top 
of the ancient stupendous earthwork, grown over with 
oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and hazel 
with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It is mar- 
vellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; 
I only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they 
fall, and the robin, for one spied me here and has 
come to keep me company. At intervals he spurts 
out his brilliant little fountain of sound; and that 
sudden bright melody and the bright colour of the 
sunlit translucent leaves seem like one thing. Nature 
is still, and I am still, standing concealed among trees, 
or moving cautiously through the dead russet bracken. 
Not that I am expecting to get a glimpse of the 
badger who has his hermitage in this solitary place, 
but I am on forbidden ground, in the heart of a 
sacred pheasant preserve, where one must do one's 
prowling warily. Hard by, almost within a stone's- 
throw of the wood-grown earthwork on which I stand, 
are the ruinous walls of Roman Calleva — the Sil- 
chester which the antiquarians have been occupied in 

87 



Afoot in England 

uncovering these dozen years or longer. The stone 
walls, too, like the more ancient earthwork, are over- 
grown with trees and brambles and ivy. The trees 
have grown upon the wall, sending roots deep down 
between the stones, through the crumbling cement; 
and so fast are they anchored that never a tree falls 
but it brings down huge masses of masonry with it. 
This slow levelling process has been going on for 
centuries, and it was doubtless in this way that the 
buildings within the walls were pulled down long ages 
ago. Then the action of the earth-worms began, and 
floors and foundations, with fallen stones and tiles, 
were gradually buried in the soil, and what was once a 
city was a dense thicket of oak and holly and thorn. 
Finally the wood was cleared, and the city was a walled 
wheat field — so far as we know, the ground has been 
cultivated since the days of King John. But the entire 
history of this green walled space before me — less than 
twenty centuries in duration — does not seem so very 
long compared with that of the huge earthen wall I 
am standing on, which dates back to prehistoric times. 
Standing here, knee-deep in the dead ruddy bracken, 
in the "coloured shade" of the oaks, idly watching 
the leaves fall fluttering to the ground, thinking 
in an aimless way of the remains of the two ancient 
cities before me, the British and the Roman, and of 
their comparative antiquity, I am struck with the 
thought that the sweet sensations produced in me by 
the scene differ in character from the feeling I have 
had in other solitary places. The pecuhar sense of 

88 



Roman Calleva 

satisfaction, of restfulness, of peace, experienced here 
is very perfect; but in the wilderness, where man has 
never been, or has at all events left no trace of his 
former presence, there is ever a mysterious sense of 
lonehness, of desolation, underlying our pleasure in 
nature. Here it seems good to know, or to imagine, 
that the men I occasionally meet in my solitary 
rambles, and those I see in the scattered rustic village 
hard by, are of the same race, and possibly the de- 
scendants, of the people who occupied this spot in the 
remote past — Iberian and Celt, and Roman and Saxon 
and Dane. If that hard-featured and sour-visaged 
old gamekeeper, with the cold blue unfriendly eyes, 
should come upon me here in my hiding-place, and 
scowl as he is accustomed to do, standing silent before 
me, gun in hand, to hear my excuses for trespassing 
in his preserves, I should say (mentally) : This man is 
distinctly English, and his far-off progenitors, some- 
where about sixteen hundred years ago, probably as- 
sisted at the massacre of the inhabitants of the pleasant 
little city at my feet. By and by, leaving the ruins, 
I may meet with other villagers of different features 
and different colour in hair, skin, and eyes, and of a 
pleasanter expression; and in them I may see the 
remote descendants of other older races of men, some 
who were lords here before the Romans came, and of 
others before them, even back to Neolithic times. 

This, I take it, is a satisfaction, a sweetness and 
peace to the soul in nature, because it carries with it a 
sense of the continuity of the human race, its undying 

89 



Afoot in England 

vigour, its everlastingness. After all the tempests 
that have overcome it, through all mutations in such 
immense stretches of time, how stable it is ! 

I recall the time when I lived on a vast vacant level 
green plain, an earth which to the eye, and to the 
mind which sees with the eye, appeared illimitable, 
like the ocean; where the house I was born in was 
the oldest in the district — a century old, it was said; 
where the people were the children's children of 
emigrants from Europe who had conquered and 
colonized the country, and had enjoyed but half a 
century of national life. But the people who had 
possessed the land before these emigrants — what of 
them? They- were but a memory, a tradition, a 
story told in books and hardly more to us than a 
fable; perhaps they had dwelt there for long cen- 
turies, or for thousands of years; perhaps* they had 
come, a wandering horde, to pass quickly away like a 
flight of migrating locusts; for no miemorial existed, 
no work of their hands, not the faintest trace of their 
occupancy. 

Walking one day at the side of a ditch, which had 
been newly cut through a meadow at the end of our 
plantation, I caught sight of a small black object pro- 
truding from the side of the cutting, which turned out 
to be a fragment of Indian pottery made of coarse 
clay, very black, and rudely ornamented on one side. 
On searching further a few more pieces were found. I 
took them .home and preserved them carefully, ex- 
periencing a novel and keen sense of pleasure in their 
possession; for though worthless, they were man's 

90 



Roman Calleva 

handiwork, the only real evidence I had come upon 
of that vanished people who had been before us; and 
it was as if those bits of baked clay, with a pattern 
incised on them by a man's finger-nail, had in them 
some magical property which enabled me to realize 
the past, and to see that vacant plain repeopled with 
long dead and forgotten men. 

Doubtless we all possess the feeling in some 
degree — the sense of loneliness and desolation and 
dismay at the thought of an uninhabited world, and of 
long periods when man was not. Is it not the absence 
of human life or remains rather than the illimitable 
wastes of thick-ribbed ice and snow which daunts us at 
the thought of Arctic and Antarctic regions? Again, In 
the story of the earth, as told by geology, do we not 
also experience the same sense of dismay, and the soul 
shrinking back on itself, when we come in imagination 
to those deserts desolate in time when the continuity 
of the race was broken and the world dispeopled? 
The doctrine of evolution has made us tolerant of 
the thought of human animals — our progenitors as we 
must believe — who were of brutish aspect, and whose 
period on this planet was so long that, compared with 
it, the historic and prehistoric periods are but as the 
life of an individual. A quarter of a million years has 
perhaps elapsed since the beginning of that cold period 
which, at all events In this part of the earth, killed 
Palaeolithic man; yet how small a part of his racial 
life even that time would seem If, as some believe, his 
remains may be traced as far back as the Eocene! 
But after this rude man of the Quaternary and 

91 



Afoot in England 

Tertiary epochs had passed away there is a void, a 
period which to the imagination seems measureless, 
when sun and moon and stars looked on a waste and 
mindless world. When man once more reappears he 
seems to have been re-created on somewhat different 
lines. 

It is this break in the history of the human race 
which amazes and daunts us, which "shadows forth 
the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, 
ajid thus stabs us from behind with the thought of an- 
nihilation." 

Here, in these words of Hermann Melville, we are 
let all at once into the true meaning of those disquiet- 
ing and seemingly indefinable emotions so often ex- 
perienced, even by the most ardent lovers of nature 
and of solitude, in uninhabited deserts, on great 
mountains, and on the sea. We find here the origin 
of that horror of mountains which was so common 
until recent times. A friend once confessed to me 
that he was always profoundly unhappy at sea during 
long voyages, and the reason was that his sustaining 
belief in a superintending Power and in immortality 
left him when he was on that waste of waters which 
have no human associations. The feeling, so intense 
in his case, is known to most if not all of us; but we 
feel it faintly as a disquieting element in nature of 
which we may be but vaguely conscious. 

Most travelled Englishmen who have seen much of 
the world and resided for long or short periods in many 
widely separated countries would probably agree that 
there is a vast difference in the feeling of strangeness, 

92 



Roman Calleva 

or want of harmony with our surroundings, experi- 
enced in old and in new countries. It is a compound 
feeling and some of its elements are the same in both 
cases; but in one there is a disquieting element which 
the other is without. Thus, in Southern Europe, 
Egypt, Syria, and in many countries of Asia, and some 
portions of Africa, the wanderer from home might 
experience dissatisfaction and be ill at ease and wish 
for old familiar sights and sounds; but in a colony 
like Tasmania, and in any new country where there 
were no remains of antiquity, no links with the past, 
the feeling would be very much more poignant, and 
in some scenes and moods would be like that sense of 
desolation which assails us at the thought of the heart- 
less voids and immensities of the universe. 

He recognizes that he is in a world on which we 
have but recently entered, and in which our position 
is not yet assured. 

Here, standing on this mound, as on other occa- 
sions past counting, I recognize and appreciate the 
enormous difference which human associations make 
in the effect produced on us by visible nature. In 
this silent solitary place, with the walled field which 
was once Calleva Atrebatum at my feet, I yet have a 
sense of satisfaction, of security, never felt in a land 
that had no historic past. The knowledge that my 
individual life is but a span, a breath; that in a little 
while I too must wither and mingle hke one of those 
fallen yellow leaves with the mould, does not grieve 
me. I know it and yet disbelieve it; for am I not 
here alive, where men have inhabited for thousands of 

93 



Afoot in England 

years, feeling what I now feel — their oneness with 
everlasting nature and the undying human family? 
The very soil and wet carpet of moss on which their 
feet were set, the standing trees and leaves, green 
or yellow, the rain-drops, the air they breathed, the 
sunshine In their eyes and hearts, was part of them, 
not a garment, but of their very substance and spirit. 
Feeling this, death becomes an illusion; and the 
illusion that the continuous life of the species (its 
immortality) and the individual life are one and the 
same Is the reality and truth. An illusion, but, as 
Mill says, deprive us of our illusions and life would 
be intolerable. Happily we are not easily deprived 
of them, since they are of the nature of instincts 
and ineradicable. And this very one which our 
reason can prove to be the most childish, the ab- 
surdist of all, is yet the greatest, the most fruitful 
of good for the race. To those who have discarded 
supernatural religion, it may be a religion, or at all 
events the foundation to build one on. For there Is no 
comfort to the healthy natural man In being told that 
the good he does will not be interred with his bones, 
since he does not wish to think, and in fact refuses to 
think, that his bones will ever be interred. Joy In the 
"choir invisible" is to him a mere poetic fancy, or at 
best a rarefied transcendentalism, which fails to sustain 
him. If altruism, or the religion of humanity, is a 
living vigorous plant, and as some believe flourishes 
more with the progress of the centuries. It must, like 
other "soul-growths," have a deeper, tougher woodier 
root in our soil. 

94 



Chapter Eight: A Cold Day At 
Silchester 

It is little to a man's profit to go far afield if his 
chief pleasure be in wild life, his main object 
to get nearer to the creatures, to grow day by 
day more intimate with them, and to see each day 
some new thing. Yet the distance has the same 
fascination for him as for another — the call is as 
sweet and persistent in his ears. If he is on a green 
level country with blue hills on the horizon, then, 
especially in the early morning, is the call sweetest, 
most irresistible. Come away — come away: this blue 
world has better things than any in that green, too 
familiar place. The startling scream of the jay — you 
have heard it a thousand times. It is pretty to watch 
the squirrel in his chestnut-red coat among the oaks 
in their fresh green foliage, full of fun as a bright 
child, eating his apple like a child, only it is an oak- 
apple, shining white or white and rosy-red, in his 
little paws; but you have seen it so many times — 
come away! 

It was not this voice alone which made me forsake 
the green oaks of Silchester and Pamber Forest, to 
ramble for a season hither and thither in Wiltshire, 
Dorset, and Somerset; there was something for me 
to do in those places, but the call made me glad to go. 

95 



Afoot in England 

And long weeks — months — went by in my wander- 
ings, mostly in open downland country, too often 
under gloomy skies, chilled by cold winds and wetted 
by cold rains. Then, having accomplished my pur- 
pose and discovered incidentally that the call had 
mocked me again, as on so many previous occasions, 
I returned once more to the old familiar green place. 

Crossing the common, I found that where it had 
been dry in spring one might now sink to his knees 
in the bog; also that the snipe which had vanished 
for a season were back at the old spot where they 
used to breed. It was a bitter day near the end of 
an unpleasant summer, with the wind back) in the 
old hateful north-east quarter; but the sun shone, 
the sky was blue, and the flying clouds were of a 
dazzling whiteness. Shivering, I remembered the 
south wall, and went there, since to escape from the 
wind and bask like some half-frozen serpent or lizard 
in the heat was the highest good one could look for 
in such weather. To see anything new in wild life 
was not to be hoped for. 

That old grey, crumbling wall of ancient Callcva, 
crowned with big oak and ash and thorn and holly, 
and draped with green bramble and trailing ivy and 
creepers — how good a shelter it is on a cold, rough 
day ! Moving softly, so as not to disturb any 
creature, I yet disturbed a ring snake lying close to 
the wall, into which it quickly vanished; and then 
from their old place among the stones a pair of blue 
stock-doves rushed out with clatter of wings. The 
same blue doves which I had known for three years 

96 



A Cold Day at Silchester 

at that spot! A few more steps and I came upon as 
pretty a little scene in bird life as one could wish 
for: twenty to twenty-five small birds of different 
species — tits, wrens, dunnocks, thrushes, blackbirds, 
chaffinches, yellow-hammers — were congregated on the 
lower outside twigs of a bramble bush and on the 
bare ground beside it close to the foot of the wall. 
The sun shone full on that spot, and they had met 
for warmth and for company. The tits and wrens 
were moving quietly about in the bush; others were 
sitting idly or preening their feathers on the twigs or 
the ground. Most of them were making some kind 
of small sound — little exclamatory chirps, and a 
variety of chirrupings, producing the effect of a 
pleasant conversation going on among them. This 
was suddenly suspended on my appearance, but the 
alarm was soon over, and, seeing me seated on a 
fallen stone and motionless, they took no further 
notice of me. Two blackbirds were there, sitting a 
little way apart on the bare ground; these were silent, 
the raggedest, rustiest-looking members of that little 
company; for they were moulting, and their droop- 
ing wings and tails had many unsightly gaps in them 
where the old feathers had dropped out before the 
new ones had grown. They were suffering from that 
annual sickness with temporary loss of their brightest 
faculties which all birds experience In some degree; 
the unseasonable rains and cold winds had been bad 
for them, and now they were having their sun-bath, 
their best medicine and cure. 

By and by a pert-looking, bright-feathered, dapper 

97 



Afoot in Rutland 

cock chaffinch dropped down from the bush, and, 
advancing to one of the two, the rustiest and most 
forlorn-looking, started running round and round 
him as if to make a close inspection of his figure, 
then began to tease him. At first I thought it was 
all in fun — merely animal spirit which in birds often 
discharges itself in this way in little pretended at- 
tacks and fights. But the blackbird had no play and 
no fight in him, no heart to defend himself; all he did 
was to try to avoid the strokes aimed at him, and he 
could not always escape them. His spiritlessness 
served to inspire the chaffinch with greater boldness, 
and then it appeared that the gay little creature was 
really and truly incensed, possibly because the rusty, 
draggled, and listless appearance of the larger bird 
was offensive to him. Anyhow, the persecutions con- 
tinued, increasing in fury until they could not be borne, 
and the blackbird tried to escape by hiding in the 
bramble. But he was not permitted to rest there; out 
he was soon driven and away into another bush, and 
again into still another further away, and finally he 
was hunted over the sheltering wall into the bleak 
wind on the other side. Then the persecutor came 
back and settled himself on his old perch on the bram- 
ble, well satisfied at his victory over a bird so much 
bigger than himself. All was again peace and har- 
mony in the little social gathering, and the pleasant 
talkee-talkee went on as before. About five minutes 
passed, then the hunted blackbird returned, and, 
going to the identical spot from which he had been 

98 



A Cold Day at Silchester 

driven, composed himself to rest; only now he sat 
facing his lively little enemy. 

I was astonished to see him back; so, apparently, 
was the chaffinch. H'e started, craned his neck, and 
regarded his adversary first with one eye then with 
the other. "What, rags and tatters, back again 
so soon!" I seem to hear him say. "You miserable 
travesty of a bird, scarcely fit for a weasel to dine 
on! Your presence is an insult to us, but I'll soon 
settle you. You'll feel the cold on the other side of 
the wall when I've knocked off a few more of your 
rusty rags." 

Down from his perch he came, but no sooner had 
he touched his feet to the ground than the blackbird 
went straight at him with extraordinary fury. The 
chaffinch, taken by surprise, was buffeted and knocked 
over, then, recovering himself, fled in consternation, 
hotly pursued by the sick one. Into the bush they 
went, but in a moment they were out again, darting 
this way and that, now high up in the trees, now 
down to the ground, the blackbird always close 
behind; and no little bird flying from a hawk could 
have exhibited a greater terror than that pert chaffinch 
— that vivacious and most pugnacious little cock 
bantam. At last they went quite away, and were lost 
to sight. By and by the blackbird returned alone, 
and, going once more to his place near the second 
bird, he settled down comfortably to finish his sun- 
bath in peace and quiet. 

I had assuredly witnessed a new thing on that un- 

99 



Afoot in England 

promising day, something quite different from any- 
thing witnessed in my wide rambles; and, though a 
little thing, it had been a most entertaining comedy 
in bird life with a very proper ending. It was clear 
that the sick blackbird had bitterly resented the treat- 
ment he had received; that, brooding on it out in 
the cold, his anger had made him strong, and that 
he came back determined to fight, with his plan of 
action matured. He was not going to be made a 
fool every time ! 

The birds all gone their several ways at last, I 
got up from my stone and wondered if the old Romans 
ever dreamed that this wall which they made to endure 
would after seventeen hundred years have no more 
important use than this — to afford shelter to a few 
little birds and to the solitary man that watched 
them from the bleak wind. Many a strange Roman 
curse on this ungenial climate must these same stones 
have heard. 

Looking through a gap in the wall I saw, close by, 
on the other side, a dozen men at work with pick 
and shovel throwing up huge piles of earth. They 
were uncovering a small portion of that ancient 
buried city and were finding the foundations and 
floors and hypocausts of Silchester's public baths; 
also some broken pottery and trifling ornaments of 
bronze and bone. The workmen in that bitter wind 
were decidedly better off than the gentlemen from 
Burlington House in charge of the excavations. 
These stood with coats buttoned up and hands thrust 
deep down in their pockets. It seemed to me that 

100 



A Cold Day at Silchester 

it was better to sit in the shelter of the wall and 
watch the birds than to burrow in the crumbling 
dust for that small harvest. Yet I could understand 
and even appreciate their work, although it is prob- 
able that the glow I experienced was in part reflected. 
Perhaps my mental attitude, when standing in that 
sheltered place, and when getting on to the windy 
wall I looked down on the workers and their work, 
was merely benevolent. I had pleasure in their 
pleasure, and a vague desire for a better understand- 
ing, a closer alliance and harmony. It was the desire 
that we might all see nature — the globe with all It 
contains — as one harmonious whole, not as groups 
of things, or phenomena, unrelated, cast there by 
chance or by careless or contemptuous gods. This 
dust of past ages, dug out of a wheat-field, with Its 
fragments of men's work — Its pottery and tiles and 
stones — this Is a part, too, even as the small birds, 
with their little motives and passions, so like man's, 
are a part. I thought with self shame of my own 
sins In this connection; then, considering the lesser 
faults on the other side, I wished that Mr. St. John 
Hope would experience a like softening mood and 
regret that he had abused the Ivy. It grieves me to 
hear It called a "noxious weed." That perished 
people, whose remains in this land so deeply Interest 
him, were the mightiest "builders of ruins" the 
world has known; but who except the archaeologist 
would wish to see these piled stones In their naked 
harshness, striking the mind with dismay at the 
thought of Time and its perpetual desolations! I 

lOI 



Afoot in England 

like better the old Spanish poet who says, "What 
of Rome; its world-conquering power, and majesty 
and glory — what has it come to?" The ivy on the 
wall, the yellow wallflower, tell it. A "deadly para- 
site" quotha ! Is it not well that this plant, this 
evergreen tapestry of innumerable leaves, should 
cover and partly hide and partly reveal the "strange 
defeatures" the centuries have set on man's greatest 
works? I would have no ruin nor no old and noble 
building without it; for not only does it beautify decay, 
but from long association it has come to be in the 
mind a very part of such scenes and so interwoven 
with the human tragedy, that, like the churchyard 
yew, it seems the most human of green things. 

Here in September great masses of the plant are 
already showing a greenish cream-colour of the open- 
ing blossoms, which will be at their perfection in 
October. Then, when the sun shines, there will be 
no lingering red admiral, nor blue fly or fly of any 
colour, nor yellow wasp, nor any honey-eating or 
late honey-gathering insect that will not be here to 
feed on the ivy's sweetness. And behind the blossom- 
ing curtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, 
swift-moving, glittering forms, some nobler form will 
be hidden in a hole or fissure in the wall. Here on 
many a night I have listened to the sibilant screech 
of the white owl and the brown owl's clear, long- 
drawn> quavering lamentation: — 

"Good Ivy, what byrdys hast thou?" 
"Non but the Howlet, that How! How!" 



102 



Chapter Nine: Rural Rides 

A-hirding on a Broncho is the title of a charming 
little book published some years ago, and probably 
better known to readers on the other side of the Atlan- 
tic than in England. I remember reading it with 
pleasure and pride on account of the author's name, 
Florence Merriam, seeing that, on my mother's side, 
I am partly a Merriam myself (of the branch on the 
other side of the Atlantic) , and having been informed 
that all of that rare name are of one family, I took it 
that we were related, though perhaps very distantly. 
A-hirding on a Broncho suggested an equally allitera- 
tive title for this chapter — "Birding on a Bike"; but 
I will leave it to others, for those who go a-birding are 
now very many and are hard put to find fresh titles to 
their books. For several reasons it will suit me better 
to borrow from Cobbett and name this chapter "Ru- 
ral Rides." 

Some of us do not go out on bicycles to observe 
the ways of birds. Indeed, some of our common 
species have grown almost too familiar with the 
wheel: it has become a positive danger to them. 
They not infrequently mistake its rate of speed and in- 
jure themselves in attempting to fly across it. Recently 
I had a thrush knock himself senseless against the 
spokes of my forewheel, and cycling friends have told 



Afoot in England 

me of similar experiences they have had, in some in- 
stances the heedless birds getting killed. Chaffinches 
are like the children in village streets — they will not 
get out of your way; by and by in rural places the 
merciful man will have to ring his bell almost inces- 
santly to avoid running over them. As I do not travel 
at a furious speed I manage to avoid most things, even 
the wandering loveless oil-beetle and the small rose- 
beetle and that slow-moving insect tortoise the tumble- 
dung. Two or three seasons ago I was so unfortunate 
as to run over a large and beautifully bright grass 
snake near Aldermaston, once a snake sanctuary. 
He writhed and wriggled on the road as if I had 
broken his back, but on picking him up I was pleased 
to find that my wind-inflated rubber tyre had not, 
like the brazen chariot wheel, crushed his delicate 
vertebra; he quickly recovered, and when released 
glided swiftly and easily away into cover. Twice 
only have I deliberately tried to run down, to tread 
on coat-tails so to speak, of any wild creature. One 
was a weasel, the other a stoat, running along at a 
hedge-side before me. In both instances, just as the 
front wheel was touching the tail, the little flat-headed 
rascal swerved quickly aside and escaped. 

Even some of the less common and less tame 
birds care as little for a man on a bicycle as they do 
for a cow. Not long ago a peewit trotted leisurely 
across the road not more than ten yards from my 
front wheel; and on the same day I came upon a 
green woodpecker enjoying a dust-bath in the public 
road. He declined to stir until I stopped to watch 

104 



Rural Rides 

him, then merely flew about a dozen yards away and 
attached himself to the trunk of a fir tree at the road- 
side and waited there for me to go. Never in all my 
wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale dusting him- 
self like a barn-door fowl ! 

It is not seriously contended that birds can be 
observed narrowly in this easy way; but even for the 
most conscientious field naturalist the wheel has its 
advantages. It carries him quickly over much barren 
ground and gives him a better view of the country he 
traverses; finally, it enables him to see more birds. 
He will sometimes see thousands in a day where, 
walking, he would hardly have seen hundreds, and 
there is joy in mere numbers. It was just to get this 
general rapid sight of the bird life of the neighbouring 
hilly district of Hampshire that I was at Newbury on 
the last day of October. The weather was bright 
though very cold and windy, and towards evening I 
was surprised to see about twenty swallows in North- 
brook Street flying languidly to and fro in the shelter 
of the houses, often fluttering under the eaves and at 
intervals sitting on ledges and projections. These 
belated birds looked as if they wished to hibernate, or 
find the most cosy holes to die in, rather than to 
emigrate. On the following day at noon they came 
out again and flew up and down in the same feeble 
aimless manner. 

Undoubtedly a few swallows of all three species, 
but mostly house-martins, do "lie up" in England 
every winter, but probably very few survive to the 
following spring. We should have said that it was 

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Impossible that any should survive but for one 
authentic instance in recent years, in which a barn- 
swallow lived through the winter in a semi-torpid 
state in an outhouse at a country vicarage. What 
came of the Newbury birds I do not know, as I left 
on the 2nd of November — tore myself away, I may 
say, for, besides meeting with people I didn't know 
who treated a stranger with sweet friendliness, it is a 
town which quickly wins one's affections. It is built 
of bricks of a good deep rich red — not the painfully 
bright red so much in use now — and no person has 
had the bad taste to spoil the harmony by introducing 
stone and stucco. Moreover, Newbury has, in Shaw 
House, an Elizabethan mansion of the rarest beauty. 
Let him that is weary of the ugliness and discords in 
our town buildings go and stand by the ancient cedar 
at the gate and look across the wide green lawn at this 
restful house, subdued by time to a tender rosy-red 
colour on its walls and a deep dark red on its roof, 
clouded with grey of lichen. 

From Newbury and the green meadows of the 
Kennet the Hampshire hills may be seen, looking like 
the South Down range at its highest point viewed 
from the Sussex Weald. I made for Coombe Hill, 
the highest hill in Hampshire, and found It a con- 
siderable labour to push my machine up from the 
pretty tree-hidden village of East Woodhay at its 
foot. The top Is a league-long tableland, with 
stretches of green elastic turf, thickets of furze and 
bramble, and clumps of ancient noble beeches — a 
beautiful lonely wilderness with rabbits and birds for 

1 06 



Rural Rides 

only Inhabitants. From the highest point where a 
famous gibbet stands for ever a thousand feet above 
the sea and where there is a dew-pond, the highest in 
England, which has never dried up although a large 
flock of sheep drink in it every summer day, one 
looks down into an immense hollow, a Devil's Punch 
Bowl very many times magnified, 'and spies, far away 
and far below, a few lonely houses half hidden by 
trees at the bottom. This is the romantic village of 
Coombe, and hither I went and found the vicar busy 
in the garden of the small old picturesque parsonage. 
Here a very pretty little bird comedy was in progress : 
a pair of stock-doves which had been taken from a 
rabbit-hole in the hill and reared by hand had just 
escaped from the large cage where they had always 
lived, and all the family were excitedly engaged in 
trying to recapture them. They were delightful to see 
— those two pretty blue birds with red legs running 
busily about on the green lawn, eagerly searching for 
something to eat and finding nothing. They were 
quite tame and willing to be fed, so that anyone could 
approach them and put as much salt on their tails as 
he liked, but they refused to be touched or taken; 
they were too happy in their new freedom, running 
and flying about in that brilliant sunshine, and when I 
left towards the evening they were still at large. 

But before quitting that small isolated village in 
its green basin — a human heart in a chalk hill, almost 
the highest in England — I wished the hours I spent in 
it had been days, so much was there to see and hear. 
There was the gibbet on the hill, for example, far up 

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on the rim of the green basin, four hundred feet 
above the village; why had that memorial, that 
symbol of a dreadful past, been preserved for so 
many years and generations? and why had it been 
raised so high — was it because the crime of the 
person put to death there was of so monstrous a 
nature that it was determined to suspend him, if not 
on a gibbet fifty cubits high, at all events higher above 
the earth than Haman the son of Hammedatha the 
Agagite? The gruesome story is as follows. 

Once upon a time there lived a poor widow woman 
in Coombe, with two sons, aged fourteen and sixteen, 
who worked at a farm in the village. She had a 
lover, a middle-aged man, living at Woodhay, a 
carrier who used to go on two or three days each 
week with his cart to deliver parcels at Coombe. But 
he was a married man, and as he could not marry the 
widow while his wife remained alive. It came into his 
dull Berkshire brain that the only way out of the 
difficulty was to murder her, and to this course the 
widow probably consented. Accordingly, one day, 
he invited or persuaded her to accompany him on 
his journey to the remote village, and on the way he 
got her out of the cart and led her into a close 
thicket to show her something he had discovered 
there. What he wished to show her (according to 
one version of the story) was a populous hornets' 
nest, and having got her there he suddenly flung 
her against it and made off, leaving the cloud of in- 
furiated hornets to sting her to death. That night 
he slept at Coombe, or stayed till a very late hour at 

io8 



Rural Rides 

the widow's cottage and told her what he had done. 
In telling her he had spoken in his ordinary voice, 
but by and by it occurred to him that the two boys, 
who were sleeping close by in the living-room, might 
have been awake and listening. She assured him 
that they were both fast asleep, but he was not 
satisfied, and said that if they had heard him he 
would kill them both, as he had no wish to swing, 
and he could not trust them to hold their tongues. 
Thereupon they got up and examined the faces of 
the two boys, holding a candle over them, and saw 
that they were in a deep sleep, as was natural after 
their long day's hard work on the farm, and the 
murderer's fears were set at rest. Yet one of the 
boys, the younger, had been wide awake all the time, 
listening, trembling with terror, with wide eyes to 
the dreadful tale, and only when they first became 
suspicious instinct came to his aid and closed his eyes 
and stilled his tremors and gave him the appearance 
of being asleep. Early next morning, with his terror 
still on him, he told what he had heard to his 
brother, and by and by, unable to keep the dreadful 
secret, they related it to someone — a carter or plough- 
man on the farm. He in turn told the farmer, who 
at once gave information, and in a short time the 
man and woman were arrested. In due time they 
were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged in 
the parish where the crime had been committed. 

Everybody was delighted, and Coombe most 
delighted of all, for it happened that some of their 
wise people had been diligently examining into the 

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matter and had made the discovery that the woman 
had been murdered just outside their borders in the 
adjoining parish of Inkpen, so that they were going 
to enjoy seeing the wicked punished at somebody 
else's expense. Inkpen was furious and swore that 
it would not be saddled with the cost of a great 
public double execution. The line dividing the two 
parishes had always been a doubtful one; now they 
were going to take the benefit of the doubt and let 
Coombe hang its own miscreants ! 

As neither side would yield, the higher authorities 
were compelled to settle the matter for them, and 
ordered the cost to be divided between the two 
parishes, the gibbet to be erected on the boundary 
line, as far as it could be ascertained. This was 
accordingly done, the gibbet being erected at the 
highest point crossed by the line, on a stretch of 
beautiful smooth elastic turf, among prehistoric 
earthworks^ — a spot commanding one of the finest 
and most extensive views in Southern England. The 
day appointed for the execution brought the greatest 
concourse of people evej witnessed at that lofty spot, 
at all events since prehistoric times. If some of the 
ancient Britons had come out of their graves to look 
on, seated on their earthworks, they would have 
probably rubbed their ghostly hands together and 
remarked to each other that it reminded them of old 
times. All classes were there, from the nobility and 
gentry, on horseback and in great coaches in which 
they carried their own provisions, to the meaner sort 
who had trudged from all the country round on foot, 

IIO 



Rural Rides 

and those who had not brought their own food and 
beer were catered for by traders in carts. The crowd 
was a hilarious one, and no doubt that grand picnic 
on the beacon was the talk of the? country for a 
generation or longer. 

The two wretches having been hanged in chains on 
one gibbet were left to be eaten by ravens, crows, and 
magpipes, and dried by sun and winds, until, after 
long years, the swinging, creaking skeletons with their 
chains on fell to pieces and were covered with the 
turf, but the gibbet itself was never removed. 

Then a strange thing happened. The sheep on a 
neighbouring farm became thin and sickly and yielded 
little wool and died before their time. No remedies 
availed and the secret of their malady could not be 
discovered; but it went on so long that the farmer 
was threatened with utter ruin. Then, by chance, it 
was discovered that the chains in which the murderers 
had been hanged had been thrown by some evil- 
minded person into a dew-pond on the farm. This 
was taken to be the cause of the malady in the sheep; 
at all events, the chains having been taken out of the 
pond and buried deep in the earth, the flock re- 
covered: it was supposed that the person who had 
thrown the chains in the water to poison it had done 
so to ruin the farmer in revenge for some injustice or 
grudge. 

But even now we are not quite done with the 
gibbet! Many, many years had gone by when Inkpen 
discovered from old documents that their little dis- 
honest neighbour, Coombe, had taken more land than 

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she was entitled to, that not only a part but the 
whole of that noble hill-top belonged to her! It was 
Inkpen's turn to chuckle now; but she chuckled too 
soon, and Coombe, running out to look, found the 
old rotten stump of the gibbet still in the ground. 
Hands off ! she cried. Here stands a post, which 
you; set up yourself, or which we put up together 
and agreed that this should be the boundary line for 
ever. Inkpen sneaked off to hide herself in her 
village, and Coombe, determined to keep the subject 
In mind, set up a brand-new stout gibbet in the place 
of the old rotting one. That too decayed and fell to 
pieces in time, and the present gibbet is therefore 
the third, and nobody has ever been hanged on it. 
Coombe is rather proud of it, but I am not sure that 
Inkpen is. 

That was one of three strange events in the life of 
the village which I heard: the other two must be 
passed by; they would take long to tell and require 
a good pen to do them justice. To me the best 
thing in or of the village was the vicar himself, 
my put-upon host, a man of so bhthc a nature, so 
human and companionable, that when I, a perfect 
stranger without an introduction or any excuse for 
such intrusion came down like a wolf on his luncheon- 
table, he received me as if I had been an old friend or 
one of his own kindred, and freely gave up his time 
to me for the rest of that day. To count his years 
he was old: he had been vicar of Coombe for half a 
century, but he was a young man still and had never 
had a day's illness in his life — he did not know what a 

112 



Rural Rides 

headache was. He smoked with me, and to prove 
that he was not a total abstainer he drank my health 
in a glass of port wine — very good wine. It was 
Coombe that did it — its peaceful life, isolated from 
a distracting world in that hollow hill, and the 
marvellous purity of its air. "Sitting there on my 
lawn," he said, "you are six hundred feet above the 
sea, although in a hollow four hundred feet deep." It 
was an ideal open-air room, round and green, with the 
sky for a roof. In winter it was sometimes very 
cold, and after a heavy fall of snow the scene was 
strange and impressive from the tiny village set in its 
stupendous dazzling white bowl. Not only on those 
rare arctic days, but at all times it was wonderfully 
quiet. The shout of a child or the peaceful crow of a 
cock was the loudest sound you heard. Once a gentle- 
man from London town came down to spend a week 
at the parsonage. Towards evening on the very first 
day he grew restless and complained of the abnormal 
stillness. "I like a quiet place well enough," he 
exclaimed, "but this tingling silence I can't stand!" 
And stand it he wouldn't and didn't, for on the very 
next morning he took himself off. Many years had 
gone by, but the vicar could not forget the Londoner 
who had come down to invent a new way of describ- 
ing the Coombe silence. His tingling phrase was a 
joy for ever. 

He took me to the church — one of the tiniest 
churches in the country, just the right size for a 
church in a tiny village and assured me that he had 
never once locked the door in his fifty years — day 



Afoot in England 

and night it was open to any one to enter. It was a 
refuge and shelter from the storm and the tempest, 
and many a poor homeless wretch had found a dry place 
to sleep in that church during the last half a century. 
This man's feeling of pity and tenderness for the 
very poor, even the outcast and tramp, was a passion. 
But how strange all this would sound in the ears of 
many country clergymen ! How many have told me 
when I have gone to the parsonage to "borrow the 
key" that it had been found necessary to keep the 
church door locked, to prevent damage, thefts, etc. 
"Have you never had anything stolen?" I asked 
him. Yes, once, a great many years ago, the 
church plate had been taken away in the night. But 
it was recovered: the thief had taken it to the top 
of the hill and thrown it into the dew-pond there, 
no doubt intending to take it out and dispose of it 
at some more convenient time. But it was found, 
and had ever since then been kept safe at the vicar- 
age. Nothing of value to tempt a man to steal was 
kept in the church. He had never locked it, but 
once in his fifty years it had been locked against him 
by the churchwardens. This happened in the days 
of the Joseph Arch agitation, when the agricultural 
labourer's condition was being hotly discussed through- 
out the country. The vicar's heart was stirred, for 
he knew better than most how hard these conditions 
were at Coombe and in the surrounding parishes. 
He took up the subject and preached on it in his 
own pulpit in a way that offended the landowners 
and alarmed the farmers in the district. The church- 

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Rural Rides 

wardens, who were farmers, then locked him out of 
his church, and for two or three weeks there was no 
puMic worship in the parish of Coombe. Doubtless 
their action was applauded by all the substantial men 
In the neighbourhood; the others who lived in the 
cottages and were unsubstantial didn't matter. That 
storm blew over, but its consequ-ences endured, one 
being that the inflammatory parson continued to be 
regarded with cold disapproval by the squires and 
their larger tenants. But the vicar himself was un- 
repentant and unashamed; on the contrary, he gloried 
in what he had said and done, and was proud to be 
able to relate that a quarter of a century later one 
of the two men who had taken that extreme course 
said to him, "We locked you out of your own church, 
but years have brought me to another mind about 
that question. I see it in a different light now and 
know that you were right and we were wrong." 

Towards evening I said good-bye to my kind friend 
and entertainer and continued my rural ride. From 
Coombe it is five miles to Hurstbourne Tarrant, 
another charming "highland" village, and the road, 
sloping down the entire distance, struck me as one 
of the best to be on I had travelled in Hampshire, 
running along a narrow green valley, with oak and 
birch and bramble and thorn in their late autumn 
colours growing on the slopes on either hand. Prob- 
ably the beauty of the scene, or the swift succession 
of beautiful scenes, with the low sun flaming on 
the "coloured shades," served to keep out of my 
mind something that should have been in it. At all 



Afoot in England 

events, it was odd that I had more than once promised 
myself a visit to the very village I was approaching 
solely because William Cobbett had described and 
often stayed in it, and now no thought of him and 
his ever-delightful Rural Rides was in my mind. 

Arrived at the village I went straight to the 
"George and Dragon," where a friend had assured 
me I could always find good accommodations. But 
he was wrong: there was no room for me, I 
was told by a weird-looking, lean, white-haired 
old woman with whity-blue unfriendly eyes. She 
appeared to resent it that any one should ask. for 
accommodation at such a time, when the "shooting 
gents" from town required all the rooms available. 
Well, I had to sleep somewhere, I told her: couldn't 
she direct me to a cottage where I could get a bed? 
No, she couldn't — it is always so; but after the third 
time of asking she unfroze so far as to say that 
perhaps they would take me in at a cottage close by. 
So I went, and a poor kind widow who lived there 
with a son consented to put me up. She made a 
nice fire in the sitting-room, and after warming 
myself before it, while watching the firelight and 
shadows playing on the dim walls and ceiling, it came 
to me that I was not in a cottage, but in a large room 
with an oak floor and wainscoting. "Do you call 
this a cottage?" I said to the woman when she came 
in with tea. "No, I have it as a cottage, but it is 
an old farm-house called the Rookery," she returned. 
Then, for the first time, I remembered Rural Rides. 
"This then is the very house where William Cobbett 

ii6 



Rural Rides 

used to stay seventy or eighty years ago," I said. 
She had never heard of William Cobbett; she only 
knew that at that date it had been tenanted by a 
farmer named Blount, a Roman Catholic, who had 
some curious ideas about the land. 

That settled it. Blount was the name of Cobbett's 
friend, and I had come to the very house where 
Cobbett was accustomed to stay. But how odd that 
my first thought of the man should have come to 
me when sitting by the fire where Cobbett himself 
had sat on many a cold evening! And this was 
November the second, the very day eighty-odd years 
ago when he paid his first visit to the Rookery; at 
all events, It Is the first date he gives In Rural Rides. 
And he too had been delighted with the place and 
the beauty of the surrounding country with the trees 
In their late autumn colours. Writing on November 
2nd, 1 82 1, he says: "The place is commonly called 
Uphusband, which Is, I think, as decent a corrup- 
tion of names as one could wish to meet with. 
However, Uphusband the people will have it, and 
Uphusband it shall be for me." That is Indeed 
how he names It all through his book, after explain- 
ing that "husband" Is a corruption of Hurstbourne, 
and that there are two Hurstbournes, this being the 
upper one. 

I congratulated myself on having been refused 
accommodation at the "George and Dragon," and 
was more than satisfied to pass an evening without 
a book, sitting there alone listening to an Imaginary 
conversation between those two curious friends. 

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"Lord Carnarvon," says Cobbett, "told a man, in 
1820, that he did not like my politics. But what did 
he mean by my politics? I have no politics but such 
as he ought to like. To be sure I labour most 
assiduously to destroy a system of distress and 
misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should 
dislike my politics? However, dislike them or like 
them, to them, to those very politics, the Lords 
themselves must come at last." 

Undoubtedly he talked like that, just as he wrote 
and as he spoke in public, his style, if style it can be 
called, being the most simple, direct, and colloquial 
ever written. And for this reason, when we are 
aweary of the style of the stylist, where the living 
breathing body becomes of less consequence than its 
beautiful clothing, it is a relief, and refreshment, to 
turn from the precious and delicate expression, the 
implicit word, sought for high and low and at last 
found, the balance of every sentence and perfect 
harmony of the whole work — to go from it to the 
simple vigorous unadorned talk of Rural Rides. A 
classic, and as incongruous among classics as a farmer 
in his smock-frock, leggings, and stout boots would 
appear in a company of fine gentlemen in fashionable 
dress. The powerful face is the main thing, and we 
think little of the frock and leggings and how the 
hair is parted or if parted at all. Harsh and crabbed 
as his nature no doubt was, and bitter and spiteful 
at times, his conversation must yet have seemed hke 
a perpetual feast of honeyed sweets to his farmer 
friend. Doubtless there was plenty of variety in it: 

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Rural Rides 

now he would expatiate on the beauty of the green 
downs over which he had just ridden, the wooded 
slopes in their glorious autumn colours, and the rich 
villages between; this would remind him of Malthus, 
that blasphemous monster who had dared to say that 
the increase in food production did not keep pace 
with increase of population; then a quieting down, 
a breathing-space, all about the turnip crop, the price 
of tegs at Weyhill Fair, and the delights of hare 
coursing, until politics would come round again and 
a fresh outburst from the glorious demagogue in 
his tantrums. 

At eight o'clock Cobbett would say good night and 
go to bed, and early next morning write down what 
he had said to his friend, or some of It, and send it off 
to be printed in his paper. That, I take It, Is how 
Rural Rides was written, and that is why It seems so 
fresh to us to this day, and that to take it up after 
other books is like going out from a luxurious 
room full of fine company Into the open air to feel 
the wind and rain on one's face and see the green 
grass. 

But I very much regret that Cobbett tells us nothing 
of his farmer friend. Blount, I Imagine, must have 
been a man of a very fine character to have won the 
heart and influenced such a person. Cobbett never 
loses an opportunity of vilifying the parsons and 
expressing his hatred of the Established Church; and 
yet, albeit a Protestant, he invariably softens down 
when he refers to the Roman Catholic faith and 
appears quite capable of seeing the good that is in it. 

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Afoot in England 

It was Blount, I think, who had soothed the savage 
breast of the man in this matter. The only thing I 
could hear about Blount and his "queer notions" 
regarding the land was his idea that the soil could be 
improved by taking the flints out. "The soil to look 
upon," Cobbett truly says, "appears to be more than 
half flint, but is a very good quality." Blount thought 
to make it better, and for many years employed all the 
aged poor villagers and the children in picking the 
flints from the ploughed land and gathering them in 
vast heaps. It does not appear that he made his land 
more productive, but his hobby was a goad one for the 
poor of the village; the stones, too, proved useful after- 
wards to the road-makers, who have been using them 
these many years. A few heaps almost clothed over 
with a turf which had formed on them in the course 
of eighty years were still to be seen on the land when 
I was there. 

The following day I took no ride. The weather 
was so beautiful it seemed better to spend the time 
sitting or basking in the warmth and brightness or 
strolling about. At all events, it was a perfect day at 
Hurstbourne Tarrant, though not everywhere, for on 
that third of November the greatest portion of South- 
ern England was drowned in a cold dense white fog. 
In London it was dark, I heard. Early in the morning 
I listened to a cirl-bunting singing merrily from a 
bush close to the George and Dragon Inn. This 
charming bird is quite common in the neighbourhood, 
although, as elsewhere in England, the natives know 
it not by its book name, nor by any other, and do not 

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Rural Rides 

distinguish it from its less engaging cousin, the yel- 
low-hammer. 

After breakfast I strolled about the common and in 
Doles Wood, on the down above the village, listening 
to the birds, and on my way back encountered a tramp 
whose singular appearance produced a deep impression 
on my mind. We have heard of a work by some 
modest pressman entitled Monarchs I have met, and I 
sometimes think that one equally interesting might be 
written on Tramps I have met. As I have neither time 
nor stomach for the task, I will make a present of the 
title to any one of my fellow-travellers, curious in 
tramps, who cares to use it. This makes two good 
titles I have given away in this chapter with a bor- 
rowed one. 

But if it had been possible for me to write such a 
book, a prominent place would be given in it to the 
one tramp I have met who could be accurately 
described as gorgeous. I did not cultivate his acquaint- 
ance; chance threw us together and we separated 
after exchanging a few polite commonplaces, but his 
big flamboyant image remains vividly impressed on 
my mind. 

At noon, in the brilliant sunshine, as I came 
loiteringly down the long slope from Doles Wood to 
the village, he overtook me. He was a huge man, 
over six feet high, nobly built, su-ggesting a Scandi- 
navian origin, with a broad blond face, good features, 
and prominent blue eyes, and his hair was curly and 
shone hke gold in the sunlight. Had he been a mere 
labourer in a workman's rough clay-stained clothes, 

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one would have stood still to look at and admire him, 
and say perhaps what a magnificent warrior he would 
have looked with sword and spear and plumed helmet, 
mounted on a big horse ! But alas ! he had the stamp 
of the irreclaimable blackguard on his face; and that 
same handsome face was just then disfigured with 
several bruises in three colours — blue, black, and red. 
Doubtless he had been in a drunken brawl on the 
previous evening and had perhaps been thrown out of 
some low public-house and properly punished. 

In his dress he was as remarkable as in his figure. 
Bright blue trousers much too small for his stout legs, 
once the property, no doubt, of some sporting young 
gent of loud tastes in colours; a spotted fancy waist- 
coat, not long enough to meet the trousers, a dirty 
scarlet tie, long black frock-coat, shiny in places, and 
a small dirty grey cap which only covered the top- 
most part of his head of golden hair. 

Walking by the hedge-side he picked and devoured 
the late blackberries, which were still abundant. It 
was a beautiful unkept hedge with scarlet and purple 
fruit among the many-coloured fading leaves and 
silver-grey down of old-man's-beard. 

I too picked and ate a few berries and made the 
remark that it was late to eat such fruit in November. 
The Devil in these parts, I told him, flies abroad in 
October to spit on the bramble bushes and spoil the 
fruit. It was even worse further north, in Norfolk 
and Suffolk, where they say the Devil goes out at 
Michaelmas and shakes his verminous trousers over 
the bushes. 

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Rural Rides 

He didn't smile; he went on sternly eating black- 
berries, and then remarked in a bitter tone, "That 
Devil they talk about must have a busy time, to go 
messing a.bout blackberry bushes in addition to all 
his other important work." 

I was silent, and presently, after swallowing a few 
more berries, he resumed in the same tone: "Very 
fine, very beautiful all this" — waving his hand to 
indicate the hedge, its' rich tangle of purple-red stems 
and coloured leaves, and scarlet fruit and silvery old- 
man's-beard. "An artist enjoys seeing this sort of 
thing, and it's nice for all those who go about just for 
the pleasure of seeing things. But when it comes to 
a man tramping twenty or thirty miles a day on an 
empty belly, looking for work which he can't find, he 
doesn't see it quite in the same way." 

"True," I returned, with indifference. 

But he was not to be put off by my sudden cold- 
ness, and he proceeded to inform me that he had just 
returned from Salisbury Plain, that it had been noised 
abroad that ten thousand men were wanted by the 
War Office to work in forming new camps. On 
arrival he found it was not so — it was all a lie — men 
were not wanted — and he was now on his way to 
Andover, penniless and hungry and 

By the time he had got to that part of his story we 
were some distance apart, as I had remained standing 
still while he, thinking me still close behind, had 
gone on picking blackberries and talking. He was 
soon out of sight. 

At noon the following day, the weather still being 

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bright and genial, I went to Crux Easton, a hill- 
top village consisting of some low farm buildings, 
cottages, and a church not much bigger than a 
cottage. A great house probably once existed here, 
as the hill has a noble avenue of limes, which it wears 
like a comb or crest. On the lower slope of the 
hill, the old unkept hedges were richer in colour 
than in most places, owing to the abundance of the 
spindle-wood tree, laden with its loose clusters of 
flame-bright, purple-pink and orange berries. 

Here I saw a pretty thing: a cock cirl-bunting, 
his yellow breast towards me, sitting quietly on a large 
bush of these same brilliant berries, set amidst a 
mass of splendidly coloured hazel leaves, mixed 
with bramble and tangled with ivy and silver-grey 
traveller's-joy. An artist's heart would have leaped 
with joy at the sight, but all his skill and oriental 
colours would have made nothing of it, for all visible 
nature was part of the picture, the wide wooded earth 
and the blue sky beyond and above the bird, and the 
sunshine that glorified all. 

On the other side of the hedge there were groups 
of fine old beech trees and, strange to see, just 
beyond the green slope and coloured trees, was the 
great whiteness of the fog which had advanced thus 
far and now appeared motionless. I went down and 
walked by the side of the bank of mist, feeling its 
clammy coldness on one cheek while the other was 
fanned by the warm bright air. Seen at a distance 
of a couple of hundred yards, the appearance was 
that of a beautiful pearly-white cloud resting upon the 

124 



Rural Rides 

earth. Many fogs had I seen, but never one like 
this, so substantial-looking, so sharply defined, stand- 
ing like a vast white wall or flat-topped hill at the 
foot of the green sunlit slope ! I had the fancy that 
if I had been an artist in sculpture, and rapid modeller, 
by using the edge of my hand as a knife I could 
have roughly carved out a human figure, then drawing 
it gently out of the mass proceeded to press and 
work it to a better shape, the shape, let us say, of a 
beautiful woman. Then, if it were done excellently, 
and some man-mocking deity, or power of the air, 
happened to be looking on, he would breathe life 
and intelligence into it, and send it, or her, abroad to 
mix with human kind and complicate their affairs. 
For she would seem a woman and would be like some 
women we have known, beautiful with blue flower- 
like eyes, pale gold or honey-coloured hair; very 
white of skin, Leightonian, almost diaphanous, so 
delicate as to make all other skins appear coarse and 
made of clay. And with her beauty and a mysterious 
sweetness not of the heart, since no heart there would 
be in that mist-cold body, she would draw all hearts, 
ever inspiring, but never satisfying passion, her beauty 
and alluring smiles being but the brightness of a cloud 
on which the sun is shining. 

Birds, driven by the fog to that sunlit spot, were 
all about me in incredible numbers. Rooks and 
daws were congregating on the bushes, where their 
black figures served to intensify the red-gold tints of 
the foliage. At intervals the entire vast cawing 
multitude simultaneously rose up with a sound as 

125 



Afoot in Rn gland 

or many waters, and appeared now at last about to 
mount up into the blue heavens, to float circling 
there far above the world as they are accustomed to 
do on warm windless days in autumn. But in a 
little while their brave note would change to one of 
trouble; the sight of that immeasurable whiteness 
covering so much of the earth would scare them, and 
led by hundreds of clamouring daws they would come 
down again to settle once more in black masses on 
the shining yellow trees. 

Close by a ploughed field of about forty acres was 
the camping-ground of an army of peewits; they 
were travellers from the north perhaps, and were 
quietly resting, sprinkled over the whole area. More 
abundant were the small birds in mixed flocks or 
hordes — finches, buntings, and larks in thousands on 
thousands, with a sprinkling of pipits and pied and 
grey wagtails, all busily feeding on the stubble and 
fresh ploughed land. Thickly and evenly distributed, 
they appeared to the vision ranging over the brown 
level expanse as minute animated and variously 
coloured clods — black and brown and grey and yellow 
and olive-green. 

It was a rare pleasure to be in this company, to 
revel in their astonishing numbers, to feast my soul 
on them as it were — little birds in such multitudes 
that ten thousand Frenchmen and Italians might 
have gorged to repletion on their small succulent 
bodies — and to reflect that they were safe from per- 
secution so long as they remained here in England. 
This is something for an Englishman to be proud of. 

126 



Rural Rides 

After spending two hours at Crux Easton, with 
that dense immovable fog close by, I at length took 
the plunge to get to Highclere. What a change ! 
I was at once where all form and colour and melody 
had been blotted out. My clothes were hoary with 
clinging mist, my fingers numb with cold, and 
Highclere, its scattered cottages appearing like dim 
smudges through the whiteness, was the dreariest 
village on earth. I fled on to Newbury in quest of 
warmth and light, and found it indoors, but the town 
was deep in the fog. 

The next day I ventured out again to look for the 
sun, and found it not, but my ramble was not with- 
out its reward. In a pine wood three miles from the 
town I stood awhile to listen to the sound as of 
copious rain of the moisture dropping from the 
trees, when a sudden tempest of loud, sharp metallic 
notes — a sound dear to the ornithologist's ears — 
made me jump; and down into the very tree before 
which I was standing dropped a flock of about twenty 
crossbills. So excited and noisy when coming down, 
the instant they touched the tree they became perfectly 
silent and motionless. Seven of their number had 
settled on the outside shoots, and sat there within 
forty feet of me, looking like painted wooden images 
of small green and greenish-yellow parrots; for a 
space of fifteen minutes not the slightest movement 
did they make, and at length, before going, I waved 
my arms about and shouted to frighten them, and 
still they refused to stir. 

Next morning that memorable fog lifted, to Eng- 

127 



Afoot in England 

land's joy, and quitting my refuge I went out once 
more into the region of high sheep-walks, adorned 
with beechcn woods and traveller's-joy in the hedges, 
rambling by Highclere, Burghclere, and Kingsclere. 
The last — Hampshire's little Cuzco — is a small and 
village-like old red brick town, unapproached by a 
railroad and unimproved, therefore still beautiful, as 
were all places in other, better, less civilized days. 
Here in the late afternoon a chilly grey haze crept 
over the country and set me wishing for a fireside 
and the sound of friendly voices, and I turned my 
face towards beloved Silchester. Leaving the hills 
behind me I got away from the haze and went my 
devious way by serpentine roads through a beautiful, 
wooded, undulating country. And I wish that for a 
hundred, nay, for a thousand years to come, I could 
on each recurring November have such an afternoon 
ride, with that autumnal glory in the trees. Some- 
times, seeing the road before me carpeted with pure 
yellow, I said to myself, now I am coming to elms; 
but when the road shone red and russet-gold before 
me I knew it was overhung by beeches. But the 
oak is the common tree in this* place, and from every 
high point on the road I saw far before me and 
on either hand the woods and copses all a tawny 
yellow gold — the hue of the dying oak leaf. The 
tall larches were lemon-yellow, and when growing 
among tall pines produced a singular effect. Best 
of all was it where beeches grew among the firs, and 
the low sun on my left hand shining through the 
wood gave the coloured translucent leaves an un- 

128 



Rural Rides 

imaginable splendour. This was the very effect 
which men, inspired by a sacred passion, had sought 
to reproduce in their noblest work — the Gothic 
cathedral and church, its dim interior lit by many- 
coloured stained glass. The only choristers in these 
natural fanes were the robins and the small lyrical 
wren; but on passing through the rustic village of 
Wolverton I stopped for a couple of minutes to 
listen to the lively strains of a cirl-bunting among 
some farm buildings. 

Then on to Silchester, its furzy common and 
scattered village and the vast ruinous walls, over- 
grown with ivy, bramble, and thorn, of ancient 
Roman Calleva. Inside the walls, at one spot, a 
dozen men were still at work in the fading light; 
they were just finishing — shovelling earth in to 
obliterate all that had been opened out during the 
year. The old flint foundations that had been re- 
vealed; the houses with porches and corridors and 
courtyards and pillared hypocausts; the winter room 
with its wide beautiful floor — red and black and white 
and grey and yellow, with geometric pattern and 
twist and scroll and flower and leaf and quaint figures 
of man and beast and bird — all to be covered up with 
earth so that the plough may be driven over it again, 
and the wheat grow and ripen again as it has grown 
and ripened there above the dead city for so many 
centuries. The very earth within those walls had 
a reddish cast owing to the innumerable fragments 
of red tile and tesserae mixed with It. Larks and 
finches were busily searching for seeds in the reddish- 

129 



Afoot in England 

brown soil. They would soon be gone to their 
roosting-places and the tired men to their cottages, 
and the white owl coming from his hiding-place in 
the walls would have old Silchester to himself, as he 
has had it since the cries and moans of the conquered 
died into silence so long ago. 



130 



Chapter Ten: The hast of His 
Name 

I came by chance to the village — Norton, we will 
call it, just to call it something, but the county 
in which it is situated need not be named. It 
happened that about noon that day I planned to pass 
the night at a village where, as I was informed at a 
small country town I had rested in, there was a nice 
inn — "The Fox and Grapes" — to put up at, but when 
I arrived, tired and hungry, I was told that I could 
not have a bed and that the only thing to do was to try 
Norton, which also boasted an inn. It was hard to 
have to turn some two or three miles out of my road 
at that late hour on a chance of a shelter for the 
night, but there was nothing else to do, so on to 
Norton I went with heavy steps, and arrived a little 
after sunset, more tired and hungry than ever, only 
to be told at the inn that they had no accommodation 
for me, that their one spare room had been engaged! 
"What am I to do, then?" I demanded of the land- 
lord. "Beyond this village I cannot go to-night — 
do you want me to go out and sleep under a hedge?" 
He called his spouse, and after some conversation 
they said the village baker might be able to put me 
up, as he had a spare bedroom in his house. So 
to the baker's I went, and found it a queer, ram- 
shackle old place, standing a little back from the 
village street in a garden and green plot with a few 



Afoot in England 

fruit trees growing on it. To my knock the baker 
himself came out — a mild-looking, flabby-faced man, 
with his mouth full, in a very loose suit of pyjama- 
likc garments of a bluish floury colour. I told him 
my story, and he listened, swallowing his mouthful, 
then cast his eyes down and rubbed his chin, which 
had a small tuft of hairs growing on it, and finally 
said, "I don't know. I must ask my wife. But 
come in and have a cup of tea — we're just having a 
cup ourselves, and perhaps you'd like one." 

I could have told him that 'I should like a dozen 
cups and a great many slices of bread-and-butter, 
if there was nothing else more substantial to be 
had. However, I only said, "Thank you," and 
followed him in to where his wife, a nice^ooking 
woman, with black hair and olive face, was seated 
behind the teapot. Imagine my surprise when I 
found that besides tea there was a big hot repast 
on the table — a ham, a roast fowl, potatoes and cab- 
bage, a rice pudding, a dish of stewed fruit, bread- 
and-butter, and other things ! 

"You call this a cup of tea!" I exclaimed de- 
lightedly. The woman laughed, and he explained in 
an apologetic way that he had formerly suffered 
grievously from indigestion, so that for many years 
his life was a burden to him, until he discovered that 
if he took one big meal a day, after the work was 
over, he could keep perfectly well. 

I was never hungrier than on this evening, and 
never, I think, ate a bigger or more enjoyable meal; 
nor have I ever ceased to remember those two with 



The Last of His Name 

gratitude, and if I were to tell here what they told 
me — the history of their two lives — I think it would 
be a more interesting story than the one I am about 
to relate. I stayed a whole week in their hospitable 
house; a week which passed only too quickly, for 
never had I been in a sweeter haunt of peace than 
this village in a quiet, green country remote from 
towns and stations. It was a small rustic place, a few 
old houses and thatched cottages, and the ancient 
church with square Norman tower hard to see amid 
the immense old oaks and elms that grew all about it. 
At the end of the village were the park gates, and 
the park, a solitary, green place with noble trees, was 
my favourite haunt; for there was no one to forbid 
me, the squire being dead, the old red Elizabethan 
house empty, with only a caretaker in the gardener's 
lodge to mind it, and the estate for sale. Three years 
it had been in that condition, but nobody seemed to 
want it; occasionally some important person came 
rushing down in a motor-car, but after running over 
the house he would come out and, remarking that it 
was a "rummy old place," remount his car and vanish 
in a cloud of dust to be seen no more. 

The dead owner, I found, was much in the village 
mind; and no wonder, since Norton had never been 
without a squire until he passed away, leaving no one 
to succeed him. It was as if some ancient landmark, 
or an immemorial oak tree on the green in whose 
shade the villagers had been accustomed to sit for 
many generations, had been removed. There was a 
sense of something wanting — something gone out of 



Afoot in England 

their lives. Moreover, he had been a man of a 
remarkable character, and though they never loved 
him they yet reverenced his memory. 

So much was he in their minds that I could not be 
in the village and not hear the story of his life — the 
story which, I said, interested me less than that of 
the good baker and his wife. On his father's death 
at a very advanced age he came, a comparative 
stranger, to Norton, the first half of his life having 
been spent abroad. He was then a middle-aged man, 
unmarried, and a bachelor he remained to the end. 
He was of a reticent disposition and was said to be 
proud; formal, almost cold, in manner; furthermore, 
he did not share his neighbours' love of sport of any 
description, nor did he care for society, and because 
of all this he was regarded as peculiar, not to say 
eccentric. But he was deeply interested in agricul- 
ture, especially in cattle and their improvement, and 
that object grew to be his master passion. It was a 
period of great depression, and as his farms fell 
vacant he took them into his own hands, increased 
his stock and built model cowhouses, and came at 
last to be known throughout his own country, and 
eventually everywhere, as one of the biggest cattle- 
breeders in England. But he was famous in a 
peculiar way. Wise breeders and buyers shook their 
heads and even touched their foreheads significantly, 
and predicted that the squire of Norton would finish 
by ruining himself. They were right, he ruined him- 
self; not that he was mentally weaker than those who 
watched and cunningly exploited him; he was ruined 



The Last of His Name 

because his object was a higher one than theirs. He 
saw clearly that the prize system is a vicious one and 
that better results may be obtained without it. He 
proved this at a heavy cost by breeding better beasts 
than his rivals, who were all exhibitors and prize- 
winners, and who by this means got their advertise- 
ments and secured the highest prices, while he, who 
disdained prizes and looked with disgust at the over- 
fed and polished animals at shows, got no advertise- 
ments and was compelled to sell at unremunerative 
prices. The buyers, it may be mentioned, were al- 
ways the breeders for shows, and they made a splendid 
profit out of it. 

He carried on the fight for a good many years, 
becoming more and more involved, until his creditors 
took possession of the estate, sold off the stock, let 
the farms, and succeeded in finding a tenant for the 
furnished house. He went to a cottage in the village 
and there passed his remaining years. To the world 
he appeared unmoved by his reverses. The change 
from mansion and park to a small thatched cottage, 
with a labourer's wife for attendant, made no change 
in the man, nor did he resign his seat on the Bench 
of Magistrates or any other unpaid office he held. 
To the last he was what he had always been, formal 
and ceremonious, more gracious to those beneath him 
than to equals; strict in the performance of his 
duties, living with extreme frugality and giving freely 
to those in want, and very regular in his attendance 
at church, where he would sit facing the tombs and 
memorials of his ancestors, among the people but not 

135 



Afoot in England 

of them — a man alone and apart, respected by all but 
loved by none. 

Finally he died and was buried with the others, 
and one more memorial with the old name, which he 
bore last was placed on the wall. That was the story 
as it was told me, and as it was all about a man who 
was without charm and had no love interest it did 
not greatly interest me, and I soon dismissed it from 
my thoughts. Then one day coming through a grove 
in the park and finding myself standing before the 
ancient, empty, desolate house — for on the squire's 
death everything had been sold and taken away — ^I 
remembered that the caretaker had begged me to let 
him show mc over the place. I had not felt inclined 
to gratify him, as I had found him a young man 
of a too active mind whose only desi/e was to capture 
some person to talk to and unfold his original ideas 
and schemes, but now having come to the house I 
thought I would suffer him, and soon found him at 
work in the vast old walled garden. He joyfully 
threw down his spade and let me in and then up to 
the top floor, determined that I should see every- 
thing. By the time we got down to the ground floor 
I was pretty tired of empty rooms, oak panelled, 
and passages and oak staircases, and of talk, and im- 
patient to get away. But no, I had not seen the 
housekeeper's room — I must see that ! — and so into 
another great vacant room I was dragged, and to keep 
me as long as possible in that last room he began 
unlocking and flinging open all the old oak cupboards 
and presses. Glancing round at the long array of 

136 



The Last of His Name 

empty shelves, I noticed a small brown-paper parcel, 
thick with dust, in a corner, and as it was the only 
movable thing I had seen in that vacant house I 
asked him what the parcel contained. Books, he 
replied — they had been left as of no value when 
the house was cleared of furniture. As I wished to 
see the books he undid the parcel; it contained forty 
copies of a small quarto-shaped book of sonnets, with 
the late squire's name as author on the title page. 
I read a sonnet, and told him I should like to read 
them all. "You can have a copy, of course," he 
exclaimed. "Put it in your pocket and keep it." 
When I asked him if he had any right to give one 
away he laughed and said that if any one had thought 
the whole parcel worth twopence it would not have 
been left behind. He was quite right; a cracked 
dinner-plate or a saucepan with a hole in it or an 
earthenware teapot with a broken spout would not 
have been left, but the line was drawn at a book 
of sonnets by the late squire. Nobody wanted it, and 
so without more qualms I put it in my pocket, and 
have it before me now, opened at page 63, on which 
appears, without a headline, the sonnet I first read, 
and which I quote : — 

How beautiful are birds, of God's sweet air 
Free denizens; no ugly earthly spot 
Their boundless happiness doth seem to blot. 

The swallow, swiftly flying here and there, 

Can it be true that dreary household care 
Doth goad her to incessant flight? If not 
How can it be that she doth cast her lot 



Afoot in England 

Now thele, now here, pursuing summer everywhere? 

I sadly fear that shallow, tiny brain 
Is not exempt from anxious cares and fears, 

That mingled heritage of joy and pain ^ 

That for some reason everywhere appears; 

And yet those birds, how beautiful they are! 

Sure beauty is to happiness no bar. 

This has a fault that doth offend the reader of 
modern verse, and there are many of the eighty 
sonnets in the book which do not equal it in merit. 
He was manifestly an amateur; he sometimes writes 
with labour, and he not infrequently ends with the 
unpardonable weak line. Nevertheless he had rightly 
chosen this difficult form in which to express his inner 
self. It suited his grave, concentrated thought, and 
each little imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us 
a glimpse into a wise, beneficent mind. He had 
fought his fight and suffered defeat, and had then 
withdrawn himself silently from the field to die. 
But if he had been embittered he could have re- 
lieved himself in this little book. There is no trace 
of such a feeling. He only asks, in one sonnet, where 
can a balm be found for the heart fretted and torn 
with eternal cares; when we have thought and striven 
for some great and good purpose, when all our striv- 
ing has ended in disaster? His plan, he concludes, 
is to go out in the quiet night-time and look at the 
stars. 

Here let me quote two more sonnets written in 
contemplative mood, just to give the reader a fuller 

138 



The Last of His Name 

idea not of the verse, as verse, but of the spirit in the 
old squire. There is no title to these two: — 

I like a fire of wood ; there is a kind 
Of artless poetry in all its ways: 

When first 'tis lighted, how it roars and plays, 
And sways to every breath its flames, refined 
By fancy to some shape by life confined. 

And then how touching are its latter days; 

When, all its strength decayed, and spent the blaze 
Of fiery youth, grey ash is all we find. 

Perhaps we know the tree, of which the pile 
Once formed a part, and oft beneath its shade 
Have sported in our youth; or in quaint style 

Have carved upon its rugged bark a name 

Of which the memory doth alone remain — 
A memory doomed, alas ! in turn to fade. 

Bad enough as verse, the critic will say; refined, 
confined, find — what poor rhymes are these ! and he 
will think me wrong to draw these frailties from their 
forgotten abode. But I like to think of the solitary 
old man sitting by his wood fire in the old house, 
not brooding bitterly on his frustrate life, but putting 
his quiet thoughts into the form of a sonnet. The 
other is equally good — or bad, if the critic will have 
it so : — 

The clock had just struck five, and all was still 
Within my house, when straight I open threw 
With eager hand the casement dim with dew. 
Oh, what a glorious flush of light did fill 
That old staircase! and then and there did kill 



Afoot in England 

All those black doubts that ever do renew 
Their civil war with all that's good and true 
Within our hearts, when body and mind are ill 
From this slight incident I would infer 
A cheerful truth, that men without demur, 
In times of stress and doubt, throw open wide 
The windows of their breast ; nor stung by pride 
In stifling darkness gloomily abide; 
But bid the light flow in on either side. 

A "slight incident" and a beautiful thought. But 
all I have so far said about the little book is pre- 
liminary to what I wish to say about another sonnet 
which must alst) be quoted. It is perhaps, as a 
sonnet, as ill done as the others, but the subject of 
it specially attracted me, as it happened to be one 
which was much in my mind during my week's stay at 
Norton. 

That remote little village without a squire or any 
person of means or education in or near It capable 
of feeling the slightest Interest In the people, except 
the parson, an old infirm man who was never seen 
but once a week — how wanting In some essential 
thing It appeared! It seemed to me that the one 
thing which might be done In these small centres of 
rural life to brighten and beautify existence is pre- 
cisely the thing which is never done, also that what 
really is being done Is of doubtful value and some- 
times actually harmful. 

Leaving Norton one day I visited other small 
villages In the neighbourhood and found they were 
no better off. I had heard of the rector of one of 

140 



The Last of His Name 

these villages as a rather original man, and went and 
discussed the subject with him. "It is quite useless 
thinking about it," he said. "The people here are 
clods, and will not respond to any effort you can 
make to introduce a little light and sweetness into 
their lives." There was no more to be said to him, 
but I knew he was wrong. I found the villagers in 
that part of the country the most intelligent and 
responsive people of their class I had ever encoun- 
tered. It was a delightful experience to go into 
their cottages, not to read them a homily or to present 
them with a book or a shilling, nor to inquire Into 
their welfare, material and spiritual, but to converse 
intimately with a human interest in them, as would 
be the case in a country where there are no caste 
distinctions. It was delightful, because they were so 
responsive, so sympathetic, so alive. 

Now it was just at this time, when the subject was 
in my mind, that the book of sonnets came into my 
hands — given to me by the generous caretaker — 
and I read in it this one on "Innocent Amuse- 
ments" : — 

There lacks a something to complete the round 
Of our fair England's homely happiness — 
A something, yet how oft do trifles bless 

When greater gifts by far redound 

To honours lone, but no responsive sound 
Of joy or mirth awake, nay, oft oppress, 
While gifts of which we scarce the moment guess 

In never-failing joys abound. 

No nation can be truly great 

141 



Afoot in England 

That hath not something childlike in its life 
Of every day; it should its youth renew 
With simple joys that sweetly recreate 

The jaded mind, conjoined in friendly strife 
The pleasures of its childhood days pursue. 

What wise and kindly thoughts he had — the old 
squire of Norton! Surely, when telling me the story 
of his life, they had omitted something! I ques- 
tioned them on the point. Did he not in all the 
years he was at Norton House, and later when he 
lived among them in a cottage in the village — did he 
not go into their homes and meet them as if he knew 
and felt that they were all of the same flesh, children 
of one universal Father, and did he not make them 
feel this about him — that the differences in fortune 
and position and education were mere accidents? 
And the answer was: No, certainly not! as if I had 
asked a preposterous question. He was the squire, a 
gentleman — any one might understand that he could 
not come among them like that! That is what a 
parson can do because he is, so to speak, paid to 
keep an eye on them, and besides it's religion there 
and a different thing. But the squire ! — their squire, 
that dignified old gentleman, so upright in his saddle, 
so considerate and courteous to every one — but he 
never forgot his position — never in that way! I also 
asked if he had never tried to establish, or advocated, 
or suggested to them any kind of reunions to take 
place from time to time, or an entertainment or 
festival to get them to come pleasantly together, 
making a brightness in their lives — something which 

142 



The Last of His Name 

would not be cricket or football, nor any form of 
sport for a few of the men, all the others being mere 
lookers-on and the women and children left out al- 
together; something which would be for and in- 
clude everyone, from the oldest grey labourer no 
longer able to work to the toddling little ones; some- 
thing of their own invention, peculiar to Norton, 
which would be their pride and make their village 
dearer to them? And the answer was still no, 
and no, and no. He had never attempted, never 
suggested, anything of the sort. How could he — the 
squire ! Yet he wrote those wise words : — 

No nation can be truly great 

That hath not something childlike in its life 
Of every day. 

Why are we lacking in that which others undoubt- 
edly have, a something to complete the round of 
homely happiness in our little rural centres; how is it 
that we do not properly encourage the things which, 
albeit childlike, are essential, which sweetly recreate? 
It is not merely the selfishness of those who are well 
placed and prefer to live for themselves, or who have 
light but care not to shed it on those who are not of 
their class. Selfishness is common enough every- 
where, in men of all races. It is not selfishness, nor 
the growth of towns or decay of agriculture, which 
as a fact does not decay, nor education, nor any 
of the other causes usually given for the dullness, 
the greyness of village life. The chief cause, I take 
it, is that gulf, or barrier, which exists between men 



Afoot in England 

and men In different classes in our country, or a 
considerable portion of it — the caste feeling which is 
becoming increasingly rigid in the rural world, if my 
own observation, extending over a period of twenty- 
five years, is not all wrong. 



144 



Chapter Eleven: Salisbury and 
Its Doves 

Never in my experience has there been a worse 
spring season than that of 1903 for the birds, 
more especially for the short-winged migrants. 
In April I looked for the woodland warblers and found 
them not, or saw but a few of the commonest kinds. 
It was only too easy to account for this rarity. The 
bitter north-east wind had blown every day and all 
day long during those weeks when birds are coming, 
and when nearing the end of their journey, at its 
most perilous stage, the wind had been dead against 
them; its coldness and force was too much for these 
delicate travellers, and doubtless they were beaten 
down in thousands into the grey waters of a bitter sea. 
The stronger-winged wheatear was more fortunate, 
since he comes in March, and before that spell of 
deadly weather he was already back in his breeding 
haunts on Salisbury Plain, and, in fact, everywhere 
on that open down country. I was there to hear him 
sing his wild notesi to the listening waste — singing 
them, as his pretty fashion is, up in the air, suspended 
on quickly vibrating wings like a great black and white 
moth. But he was in no singing mood, and at last, in 
desperation, I fled to Salisbury to wait for loitering 
spring in that unattractive town. 

The streets were cold as the open plain, and there 
was no comfort indoors ; to haunt the cathedral during 

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Afoot in England 

those vacant days was the only occupation left to me. 
There was some shelter to be had under the walls, and 
the empty, vast Interior would seem almost cosy on 
coming in from the wind. At service my due feet 
never failed, while morning, noon, and evening I paced 
the smooth level green by the hour, standing at in- 
tervals to gaze up at the immense pile with its central 
soaring spire, asking myself why I had never greatly 
liked it in the past and did not like it much better 
now when grown familiar with it. Undoubtedly it 
is one of the noblest structures of its kind in England 
— even my eyes that look coldly on most buildings 
could see it; and I could admire, even reverence, but 
could not love. It suffers by comparison with other 
temples into which my soul has wandered. It has not 
the majesty and appearance of immemorial age, the 
dim religious richness of the interior, with much else 
that goes to make up, without and within, the expres- 
sion which is so marked in other mediaeval fanes — 
Winchester, Ely, York, Canterbury, Exeter, and Wells. 
To the dry, mechanical mind of the architect these 
great cathedrals are in the highest degree imperfect, 
according to the rules of his art: to all others this 
imperfectness is their chief excellence and glory; for 
they are in a sense a growth, a flower of many minds 
and many periods, and are imperfect even as Nature 
is, in her rocks and trees; and, being in harmony 
with Nature and like Nature, they are inexpressibly 
beautiful and satisfying beyond all buildings to the 
aesthetic as well as to the religious sense. 

Occasionally I met and talked with an old man 

146 



Salisbury and Its Doves 

employed at the cathedral. One day, closing one eye 
and shading the other with his hand, he gazed up at 
the building for some time, and then remarked: "I'll 
tell you what's wrong with Salisbury — it looks too 
noo." He was near the mark; the fault is that to 
the professional eye it is faultless; the lack of ex- 
pression is due to the fact that it came complete from 
its maker's brain, like a coin from the mint, and being 
all on one symmetrical plan it has the trim, neat 
appearance of a toy cathedral carved out of wood and 
set on a green-painted square. 

After all, my thoughts and criticisms on the 
cathedral, as a building, were merely incidental; my 
serious business was with the feathered people to be 
seen there. Few in the woods and fewer on the 
windy downs, here birds were abundant, not only on 
the building, where they were like sea-fowl con- 
gregated on a precipitous rock, but they were all 
about me. The level green was the hunting ground 
of many thrushes — a dozen or twenty could often be 
seen at one time — and it was easy to spot those that 
had young. The worm they dragged out was not 
devoured; another was looked for, then another; 
then all were cut up in proper lengths and beaten 
and bruised, and finally packed into a bundle and 
carried off. Rooks, too, were there, breeding on the 
cathedral elms, and had no time and spirit to wrangle, 
but could only caw-caw distressfully at the wind, 
which tossed them hither and thither in the air and 
lashed the tall trees, threatening at each fresh gust to 
blow their nests to pieces. Small birds of half a 



Afoot in England 

dozen kinds were also there, and one tinkle-tinkled 
his spring song quite merrily in spite of the cold 
that kept the others silent and made me blue. One 
day I spied a big queen bumble-bee on the ground, 
looking extremely conspicuous in its black and 
chestnut coat on the fresh green sward; and think- 
ing it numbed by the cold I picked it up. It moved 
its legs feebly, but alas ! its enemy had found and 
struck it down, and with its hard, sharp little beak 
had drilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its 
abdomen, and from that small opening had cunningly 
extracted all the meat. Though still alive it was 
empty as a blown eggshell. Poor queen and mother, 
you survived the winter in vain, and went abroad in 
vain in the bitter weather in quest of bread to nourish 
your few first-born — the grubs that would help you 
by and by; now there will be no bread for them, and 
for you no populous city in the flowery earth and a 
great crowd of children to rise up each day, when 
days are long, to call you blessed ! And he who 
did this thing, the unspeakable oxeye with his black 
and yellow breast — "catanic black and amber" — even 
while I made my lamentation was tinkling his merry 
song overhead in the windy elms. 

The birds that lived on the huge cathedral itself 
had the greatest attraction for me; and here the 
daws, if not the most numerous, were the most 
noticeable, as they ever are on account of their con- 
spicuousness in their black plumage, their loquacity 
and everlasting restlessness. Far up on the ledge 
from which the spire rises a kestrel had found a cosy 

148 



Salisbury and Its Doves 

corner In which to establish himself, and one day 
when I was there a number of daws took it on them- 
selves to eject him: they gathered near and flew this 
way and that, and cawed and cawed in anger, and 
swooped at him, until he could stand their insults no 
longer, and, suddenly dashing out, he struck and 
buffeted them right and left and sent them screaming 
with fear in all directions. After this they left him 
in peace: they had forgotten that he was a hawk, 
and that even the gentle mousing wind-hover has a 
nobler spirit than any crow of them all. 

On first coming to the cathedral I noticed a few 
pigeons sitting on the roof and ledges very high up, 
and, not seeing them well, I assumed that they were 
of the common or domestic kind. By and by one 
cooed, then another; and recognizing the stock-dove 
note I began to look carefully, and found that all the 
birds on the building — about thirty pairs — were of 
this species. It was a great surprise, for though we 
occasionally find a pair of stock-doves breeding on 
the ivied wall of some inhabited mansion in the 
country, it was a new thing to find a considerable 
colony of this shy woodland species established on a 
building in a town. They lived and bred there just 
as the common pigeon — the vari-coloured descendant 
of the blue rock — does on St. Paul's, the Law Courts, 
and the British Museum in London. Only, unlike 
our metropolitan doves, both the domestic kind and 
the ringdove in the parks, the Salisbury doves 
though in the town are not of it. They come not 
down to mix with the currents of human life In the 

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Afoot in England 

streets and open spaces; they fly away to the country 
to feed, and dwell on the cathedral above the houses 
and people just as sea-birds — kittiwake and guillemot 
and gannet — dwell on the ledges of some vast ocean- 
fronting cliff. 

The old man mentioned above told me that the 
birds were called "rocks" by the townspeople, also 
that they had been there for as long as he could 
remember. Six or seven years ago, he said, when 
the repairs to the roof and spire were started, the 
pigeons began to go away until there was not one 
left. The work lasted three years, and immediately 
on its conclusion the doves began to return, and were 
now as numerous as formerly. How, I inquired, did 
these innocent birds get on with their black neigh- 
bours, seeing that the daw is a cunning creature much 
given to persecution — a crow, in fact, as black as any 
of his family? They got on badly, he said; the 
doves were early breeders, beginning in March, and 
were allowed to have the use of the holes until the 
daws wanted them at the end of April, when they 
forcibly ejected the young doves. He said that in 
spring he always picked up a good many young 
doves, often unfledged, thrown down by the daws. 
I did not doubt his story. I had just found a young 
bird myself — a little blue-skinned, yellow-mouthed 
fledgling which had fallen sixty or seventy feet on to 
the gravel below. But in June, he said, when the 
daws brought off their young, the doves entered into 
possession once more, and were then permitted to rear 
their young in peace. 



Salisbury and Its Doves 

I returned to Salisbury about the middle of May 
in better weather, when there were days that were 
almost genial, and found the cathedral a« greater 
"habitacle of birds" than ever: starlings, swifts, and 
swallows were there, the lively little martins in 
hundreds, and the doves and daws in their usual 
numbers. All appeared to be breeding, and for some 
time I saw no quarreling. At length I spied a pair 
of doves with a nest in a small cavity in the stone at 
the back of a narrow ledge about seventy feet from 
the ground, and by standing back some distance I could 
see the hen bird sitting on the nest, while the cock 
stood outside on the ledge keeping guard. I watched 
this pair for some hours and saw a jackdaw sweep 
down on them a dozen or more times at long inter- 
vals. Sometimes after swooping down he would 
alight on the ledge a yard or two away, and the male 
dove would then turn and face him, and if he then 
began sidling up the dove would dash at and buffet 
him with his wings with the greatest violence and 
throw him off. When he swooped closer the dove 
would spring up and meet him in the air, striking 
him at the moment of meeting, and again the daw 
would be beaten. When I left three days after wit- 
nessing this contest, the doves were still in possession 
of their nest, and I concluded that they were not so 
entirely at the mercy of the jackdaw as the old man 
had led me .to believe. 

It was, on this occasion, a great pleasure to listen 
to the doves. The stock-dove has no set song, like 
the ringdove, but like all the other species in the 

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Afoot in Rn gland 

typical genus Columba it has the cooing or family 
note, one of the most human-like sounds which birds 
emit. In the stock-dove this is a better, more 
musical, and a more varied sound than in any other 
Columba known to me. The pleasing quality of the 
sound as well as the variety in it could be well noted 
here where the birds were many, scattered about on 
ledges and projections high above the earth, and when 
bird after bird uttered its plaint, each repeating his 
note half a dozen to a dozen times, one in slow 
measured time, and deep-voiced like the rock-dove, 
but more musical; another rapidly, with shorter, im- 
petuous notes in a higher key, as if carried away by 
excitement. There were not two birds that cooed in 
precisely the same way, and the same bird would often 
vary its manner of cooing. 

It was best to hear them during the afternoon 
service in the cathedral, when the singing of the choir 
and throbbing and pealing of the organ which filled 
the vast interior was heard outside, subdued by the 
walls through which it passed, and was like a beautiful 
mist or atmosphere of sound pervading and envelop- 
ing the great building; and when the plaining of the 
doves, owing to the rhythmic flow of the notes and 
their human characters, seemed to harmonize with 
and be a part of that sacred music. 



152 



Chapter Twelve: Whitesheet Hill 

On Easter Saturday the roadsides and copses by the 
little river Nadder were full of children gathering 
primroses; they might have filled a thousand baskets 
without the flowers being missed, so abundant were 
they in that place. Cold though it was the whole air 
was laden with the delicious fragrance. It was pleas- 
ant to see and talk with the little people occupied with 
the task they loved so well, and I made up my mind to 
see the result of all this flower-gathering next day in 
some of the village churches in the neighbourhood — 
Fovant, Teffant Evias, Chilmark, Swallowcliffe, Tis- 
bury, and Fonthill Bishop. I had counted on some 
improvement in the weather — some bright sunshine 
to light up the flower-decorated interiors; but 
Easter Sunday proved colder than ever, with the 
bitter north-east still blowing, the grey travelling 
cloud still covering the sky; and so to get the full 
benefit of the bitterness I went instead to spend my 
day on the top of the biggest down above the valley. 
That was Whitesheet Hill, and forms the highest part 
of the long ridge dividing the valleys of the Ebblc 
and Nadder. 

It was roughest and coldest up there, and suited 
my temper best, for when the weather seems spite- 
ful one finds a grim sort of satisfaction in defying it. 



Afoot in England 

On a genial day it would have been very pleasant on 
that lofty plain, for the flat top of the vast down is 
like a plain in appearance, and the earthworks on it 
show that it was once a populous habitation of man. 
Now because of the wind and cloud its aspect was 
bare and bleak and desolate, and after roaming about 
for an hour, exploring the thickest furze patches, I 
began to think that my day would have to be spent 
in solitude, without a living creature to keep me 
company. The birds had apparently all been blown 
away and the rabbits were staying at home in their 
burrows. Not even an insect could I see, although 
the furze was In full blossom; the honey-suckers 
were out of sight and torpid, and the bloom itself 
could no longer look "unprofitably gay," as the poet 
says it does. "Not even a wheatear!" I said, for I 
had counted on that bird in the intervals between the 
storms, although I knew I should not hear his wild 
delightful warble in such weather. 

Then, all at once, I beheld that very bird, a solitary 
female, flittering on over the flat ground before me, 
perching on the little green ant-mounds and flirting 
its tail and bobbing as if greatly excited at my 
presence in that lonely place. I wondered where its 
mate was, following it from place to place as it flew, 
determined now I had found a bird to keep it in 
sight. Presently a great blackness appeared low 
down in the cloudy sky, and rose and spread, 
travelling fast towards me, and the little wheatear 
fled in fear from it and vanished from sight over the 
rim of the down. But I was there to defy the 

154 



Whitesheet Hill 

weather, and so Instead of following the bird in 
search of shelter I sat down among some low furze 
bushes and waited and watched. By and by I caught 
sight of three magpies, rising one by one at long 
intervals from the furze and flying laboriously to- 
wards a distant hill-top grove of pines. Then I 
heard the wailing cry of a peewit, and caught sight 
of the bird at a distance, and soon afterwards a sound 
of another character — the harsh angry cry of a 
carrion crow, almost as deep as the raven's angry 
voice. Before long I discovered the bird at a great 
height coming towards me in hot pursuit of a kestrel. 
They passed directly over me so that I had them a 
long time in sight, the kestrel travelling quietly on 
in the face of the wind, the crow toiling after, and at 
intervals spurting till he got near enough to hurl 
himself at his enemy, emitting his croaks of rage. 
For invariably the kestrel with one of his sudden 
swallow-like turns avoided the blow and went on as 
before. I watched them until they were lost to 
sight in the coming blackness and wondered that 
so intelligent a creature as a crow should waste his 
energies in that vain chase. Still one could under- 
stand it and even sympathize with him. For the 
kestrel is a most insulting creature towards the bigger 
birds. He knows that they are incapable of paying 
him out, and when he finds them off their guard 
he will drop down and inflict a blow just for the fun of 
the thing. This outraged crow appeared determined 
to have his revenge. 

Then the storm broke on me, and so fiercely did 



Afoot in England 

the rain and sleet thrash me that, fearing a cold 
soaking, I fled before it to the rim of the plain, 
where the wheatear had vanished, and saw a couple 
of hundred yards down on the smooth steep slope a 
thicket of dwarf trees. It was the only shelter in 
sight, and to it I went, to discover much to my dis- 
gust that the trees were nothing but elders. For 
there is no tree that affords so poor a shelter, espe- 
cially on the high open downs, where the foliage is 
scantier than in other situations and lets in the wind 
and rain in full force upon you. 

But the elder affects mc in two ways. I like it 
on account of early associations, and because the 
birds delight in its fruit, though they wisely 
refuse to build in its branches; and I dislike it be- 
cause its smell Is offensive to mc and its berries the 
least pleasant of all wild fruits to my taste. I can 
eat Ivy-berries in March, and yew in its season, poison 
or not; and hips and haws and holly-berries and harsh 
acorn, and the rowan, which some think acrid; but 
the elderberry I can't stomach. 

How comes It, I have asked more than once, that 
this poor tree is so often seen on the downs where it 
Is so badly fitted to be and makes so sorry an ap- 
pearance with its weak branches broken and its soft 
leaves torn by the winds? How badly it contrasts with 
the other trees and bushes that flourish on the downs 
— furze, juniper, holly, blackthorn, and hawthorn! 

Two years ago, one day In the early spring, I was 
walking on an extensive down in another part of 
Wiltshire with the tenant of the land, who began 

156 



Whitesheet Hill 

there as a large sheep-farmer, but eventually finding 
that he could make more with rabbits than with 
sheep turned most of his land into a warren. The 
higher part of this down was overgrown with furze, 
mixed with holly and other bushes, but the slopes 
were mostly very bare. At one spot on a wide bare 
slope where the rabbits had formed a big group of 
burrows there was a close little thicket of young 
elder trees, looking exceedingly conspicuous in the 
bright green of early April. Calling my companion's 
attention to this little thicket I said something about 
the elder growing on the open downs where it always 
appeared to be out of harmony with its surround- 
ing's. "I don't suppose you planted elders here," 
I said. 

*'No, but I know who did," he returned, and he 
then gave me this curious history of the trees. Five 
years before, the rabbits, finding it a suitable spot 
to dig in, probably because of a softer chalk there, 
made a number of deep burrows at that spot. When 
the wheatears, or "horse-maggers" as he called them, 
returned in spring two or three pairs attached 
themselves to this group of burrows and bred in 
them. There was that season a solitary elder-bush 
higher up on the down among the furze which bore 
a heavy crop of berries; and when the fruit was 
ripe he watched the birds feeding on it, the wheat- 
ears among them. The following spring seedlings 
came up out of the loose earth heaped about the 
rabbit burrows, and as they were not cut down by the 
rabbits, for they dislike the elder, they grew up, and 



Afoot in England 

now formed a clump of fifty or sixty little trees of 
six feet to eight feet in height. 

Who would have thought to find a tree-planter in 
the wheatear, the bird of the stony waste and open 
naked down, who does not even ask for a bush to 
perch on? 

It then occurred to me that in every case where I 
had observed a clump of elder bushes on the bare 
downside, it grew upon a village or collection of rab- 
bit burrows, and it is probable that in every case 
the clump owed its existence to the wheatears who 
had dropped the seed about their nesting-place. 

The clump where I had sought a shelter .from the 
storm was composed of large old dilapidated-looking 
half-dead elders; perhaps their age was not above 
thirty or forty years, but they looked older than haw- 
thorns of one or two centuries; and under them the 
rabbits had their diggings — huge old mounds and 
burrows that looked like a badger's earth. Here, 
too, the burrows had probably existed first and had 
attracted the wheatears, and the birds had brought the 
seed from some distant bush. 

Crouching down in one of the big burrows at the 
roots of an old elder I remained for half an hour, 
listening to the thump-thump of the alarmed rabbits 
about me, and the accompanying hiss and swish of the 
wind and sleet and rain in the ragged branches. 

The storm over I continued my rambles on White- 
sheet Hill, and coming back an hour or two later 
to the very spot where I had seen and followed the 
wheatear, I all at once caught sight of a second bird, 

158 



Whitesheet Hill 

lying dead on the turf close to my feet ! The sudden 
sight gave me a shock of astonishment, mingled with 
admiration and grief. For how pretty it looked, 
though dead, lying on its back, the little black legs 
stuck stiffly up, the long wings pressed against the 
sides, their black tips touching together like the 
clasped hands of a corpse; and the fan-like black and 
white tail, half open as in life, moved perpetually up 
and down by the wind, as if that tail-flirting action 
of the bird had continued after death. It was very 
beautiful in its delicate shape and pale harmonious 
colouring, resting on the golden-green mossy turf. 
And it was a male, undoubtedly the mate of the 
wheatcar I had seen at the spot, and its little mate, 
not knowing what death is, had probably been keeping 
watch near it, wondering at its strange stillness and 
greatly fearing for its safety when I came that way, 
and passed by without seeing it. 

Poor little migrant, did you come back across half 
the world for this — back to your home on Whitesheet 
Hill to grow cold and fail in the cold April wind, and 
finally to look very pretty, lying stiff and cold, to the 
one pair of human eyes that were destined to see you ! 
The little birds that come and go and return to us 
over such vast distances, they perish like this in 
myriads annually; flying to and from us they are 
blown away by death like sere autumn leaves, "the 
pestilence-stricken multitudes" whirled away by the 
wind! They die in myriads: that is not strange; 
the strange, the astonishing thing is the fact of death; 
what can they tell us of it — the wise men who live or 



Afoot in England 

have ever lived on the earth — what can they say now 
of the bright intelligent spirit, the dear little emotional 
soul, that had so fit a tenement and so fitly expressed 
itself in motions of such exquisite grace, in melody 
so sweet ! Did it go out like the glow-worm's lamp, 
the life and sweetness of the flower? Was its destiny 
not like that of the soul, specialized in a different 
direction, of the saint or poet or philosopher ! Alas, 
they can tell us nothing I 

I could not go away leaving it in that exposed 
place on the turf, to be found a little later by a 
magpie or carrion crow or fox, and devoured. Close 
by there was a small round hillock, an old forsaken 
nest of the little brown ants, green and soft with 
moss and small creeping herbs — a suitable grave for 
a wheatear. Cutting out a round piece of turf from 
the side, I made a hole with my stick and put the dead 
bird in and replacing the turf left it neatly buried. 

It was not that I had or have any quarrel with the 
creatures I have named, or would have them other 
than they are — carrion-eaters and scavengers. Nature's 
balance-keepers and purifiers. The only creatures on 
earth I loathe and hate are the gourmets, the carrion- 
crows and foxes of the human kind who devour 
wheatears and skylarks at their tables. 



i6o 



Chapter Thirteen: Bath and 
Wells Revisited 

'TIs so easy to get from London to Bath, by merely 
stepping into a railway carriage which takes you 
smoothly without a stop in two short hours from Pad- 
dington, that I was amazed at myself in having al- 
lowed five full years to pass since my previous visit. 
The question was much in my mind as I strolled about 
noting the old-remembered names of streets and 
squares and crescents. Quiet Street was the name m- 
scribed on one; it was, to me, the secret name of 
them all. The old impressions were renewed, an old 
feeling partially recovered. The wide, clean ways; 
the solid, stone-built houses with their dignified aspect; 
the large distances, terrace beyond terrace; mansions 
and vast green lawns and parks and gardens; avenues 
and groups of stately trees, especially that unmatched 
clump of old planes in the Circus; the whole town, the 
design in the classic style of one master mind, set by 
the Avon, amid green hills, produced a sense of har- 
mony and repose which cannot be equalled by any other 
town in the kingdom. 

This idle time was delightful so long as I gave 
my attention exclusively to houses from the outside, 
and to hills, rocks, trees, waters, and all visible 
nature, which here harmonizes with man's works. To 
sit on some high hill and look down on Bath, sun- 
flushed or half veiled in mist; to lounge on Camden 

i6i 



Afoot in England 

Crescent, or climb Sion Hill, or take my ease with 
the water-drinkers in the spacious, comfortable Pump 
Room; or, better still, to rest at noon in the ancient 
abbey — all this was pleasure pure and simple, a quiet 
drifting back until I found myself younger by five 
years than I had taken myself to be. 

I haunted the abbey, and the more I saw of it the 
more I loved it. The impression it had made on me 
during my former visits had faded, or else I had never 
properly seen it, or had not seen it in the right 
emotional mood. Now I began to think it the best 
of all the great abbey churches of England and the 
equal of the cathedrals in its effect on the mind. 
How rich the interior is in its atmosphere of tempered 
light or tender gloom ! How tall and graceful the 
columns holding up the high roof of white stone 
with its marvellous palm-leaf sculpture ! What a vast 
expanse of beautifully stained glass! I certainly gave 
myself plenty of time to appreciate it on this occasion, 
as I visited it every day, sometimes two or three times, 
and not infrequently I sat there for an hour at a 
stretch. 

Sitting there one day, thinking of nothing, I was 
gradually awakened to a feeling almost of astonish- 
ment at the sight of the extraordinary number of 
memorial tablets of every imaginable shape and size 
which crowd the walls. So numerous are they and 
so closely placed that you could not find space any- 
where to put your hand against the wall. We are 
accustomed to think that in cathedrals and other great 
ecclesiastical buildings the illustrious dead receive 

162 



Bath and Wells Revisited 

burial, and their names and claims on our gratitude 
and reverence are recorded, but in no fane in the land 
is there so numerous a gathering of the dead as in 
this place. The inscription-covered walls were like 
the pages of an old black-letter volume without 
margins. Yet when I came to think of it I could 
not recall any Bath celebrity or great person associated 
with Bath except Beau Nash, who was not perhaps a 
very great person. Probably Carlyle would have 
described him as a "mecserable creature." 

Leaving my seat I began to examine the inscrip- 
tions, and found that they had not been placed there 
in memory of men belonging to Bath or even Somer- 
set. These monuments were erected to persons from 
all counties in the three kingdoms, and from all the 
big towns, those to Londoners being most numerous. 
Nor were they of persons distinguished in any way. 
Here you find John or Henry or Thomas Smith, 
or Brown, or Jones, or Robinson, provision dealer, or 
merchant, of Clcrkenwell, or Bermondsey, or Bishops- 
gate! Street Within or Without; also many retired 
captains, majors, and colonels. There were hundreds 
more whose professions or occupations in life were 
not stated. There were also hundreds of memorials 
to ladies — widows and spinsters. They were all, in 
fact, to persons who had come to die in Bath after 
"taking the waters," and dying, they or their friends 
had purchased immortality on the walls of the abbey 
with a handful or two of gold. Here is one of 
several inscriptions of the kind I took the trouble to 
copy: "His early virtues, his cultivated talents, his 

163 



Afoot in England 

serious piety, inexpressibly endeared him to his friends 
and opened to them many bright prospects of excel- 
lence and happiness. These prospects have all faded," 
and so on for several long lines in very big letters, 
occupying a good deal of space on the wall. But 
what and who was he, and what connection had he 
with Bath? He was a young man born in the West 
Indies who died in Scotland, and later his mother, 
coming to Bath for her health, "caused this inscrip- 
tion to be placed 0*1 the abbey walls" ! 

If this policy or tradition is still followed by the 
abbey authorities, it will be necessary for them to 
build an annexe; if it be no longer followed, would 
it be going too far to suggest that these mural tablets 
to a thousand obscurities, which ought never to have 
been placed there, should now be removed and placed 
in some vault where the relations or descendants of 
the persons described could find, and if they wished 
it, have them removed? 

But it must be said that the abbey is not without 
a fair number of memorials with which no one can 
quarrel; the one I admire most, to Quin, the actor, 
has, I think, the best or the most appropriate epitaph 
ever written. No one, however familiar with the 
words, will find fault with me for quoting them here: 

That tongue which set the table on a roar 

And charmed the public ear is heard no more. 

Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit, 

Which spake before the tongue what Shakespeare writ. 

Cold is that hand which living was stretched forth 

At friendship's call to succor modest worth. 

164 



Bath and Wells Revisited 

Here lies James Quin, deign readers to be taught 
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought, 
In Nature's happiest mood however cast, 
To this complexion thou must come at last. 

Quin's monument strikes one as the greatest there 
because of Garrick's living words, but there is 
another very much more beautiful. 

I first noticed this memorial on the wall at a 
distance of about three yards, too far to read any- 
thing in the inscription except the name of Sib- 
thorpe, which was strange to me, but instead of 
going nearer to read it I remained standing to admire 
it at that distance. The tablet was of white marble, 
and on it was sculptured the figure of a young man 
with curly head and classic profile. He was wearing 
sandals and a loose mantle held to his breast with 
one hand, while in the other hand he carried a bunch 
of leaves and flowers. He appeared in the act of 
stepping ashore from a boat of antique shape, and 
the artist had been singularly successful in producing 
the idea of free and vigorous motion in the figure as 
well as of some absorbing object in his mind. The 
figure was undoubtedly symbolical, and I began to 
am-use myself by trying to guess its meaning. Then 
a curious thing happened. A person who had been 
moving slowly along near me, apparently looking 
with no great interest at the memorials, came past 
me and glanced first at the tablet I was looking at, 
then at me. As our eyes met I remarked that I was 
admiring the best memorial I had found in the 
abbey, and then added, "I've been trying to make 

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Afoot in England 

out its meaning. You see the man is a traveller and 
is stepping ashore with a flowering spray in his hand. 
It strikes me that it may have been erected to the 
memory of a person who introduced some valuable 
plant into England." 

"Yes, perhaps," he said. "But who was he?" 

"I don't know yet," I returned. "I can only see 
that his name was Sibthorpe." 

"Sibthorpe !" he exclaimed excitedly. "Why, this 
is the very memorial I've been looking for all over 
the abbey and had pretty well given up all hopes of 
finding it." With that he went to it and began 
studying the inscription, which was in Latin. John 
Sibthorpe, I found, was a distinguished botanist, au- 
thor of the Flora Graca, who died over a century ago. 

I asked him why he was interested in Sibthorpe's 
memorial. 

"Well, you see, I'm a great botanist myself," he 
explained, "and have been familiar with his name and 
work all my life. Of course," he added, "I don't 
mean I'm great in the sense that Sibthorpe was. I'm 
only a little local botanist, quite unknown outside my 
own circle; I only mean that I'm a great lover of 
botany." 

I left him there, and had the curiosity to look up 
the great man's life, and found some very curious 
things In It. He was a son of Humphrey Sibthorpe, 
also a great botanist, who succeeded the still greater 
Dlllenlus as Sherardlan Professor of Botany at 
Oxford, a post which he held for thirty-six years, 
and during that time he delivered one lecture, which 

i66 



Bath and Wells Revisited 

was a failure. John, if he did not suck in botany 
with his mother's milk, took it quite early from his 
father, and on leaving the University went abroad 
to continue his studies. Eventually he went to 
Greece, inflamed with the ambition to identify all 
the plants mentioned by Dioscorides. Then he set 
about writing his Flora Graca; but he had a rough 
time of it travelling about in that rude land, and 
falling ill he had to leave his work undone. When 
nearing his end he came to Bath, like so many other 
afflicted ones, only to die, and he was very properly 
buried in the abbey. In his will he left an estate 
the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the 
completion of his work, which was to be in ten folio 
volumes, with one hundred plates in each. This was 
done and the work finished forty-four years after his 
death, when thirty copies were issued to the patient 
subscribers at two hundred and forty guineas a copy. 
But the whole cost of the work was set down at 
;^30,ooo ! A costlier work it would be hard to find; 
I wonder how many of us have seen it? 

But I must go back to my subject. I was not in 
Bath just to die and lie there, like poor Sibthorpe, 
with all those strange bedfellows of his, nor was I in 
search of a vacant space the size of my hand on the 
walls to bespeak it for my own memorial. On the 
contrary, I was there, as we have seen, to knock five 
years off my age. And it was very pleasant, as I 
have said, so long as I confined my attention to Bath, 
the stone-built town of old memories and associa- 
tions — so long as I was satisfied to loiter in the 

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Afoot in Rn gland 

streets and wide green places and in the Pump Room 
and the abbey. The bitter came in only when, 
going from places to faces, I began to seek out the 
friends and acquaintances of former days. The 
familiar faces seemed not wholly familiar now. A 
change had been wrought; in some cases a great 
change, as in that of some weedy girl who had 
blossomed into fair womanhood. One could not 
grieve at that; but in the middle-aged and those who 
were verging on or past that period, it was impossible 
not to feel saddened at the difference. "I see no 
change in you," is a lie ready to the lips which would 
speak some pleasing thing, but it does not quite con- 
vince. Men are naturally brutal, and use no compli- 
ments to one another; on the contrary, they do not 
hesitate to make a joke of wrinkles and grey hairs 
— their own and yours. "But, oh, the difference" 
when the familiar face, no longer familiar as of old, 
is a woman's ! This is no light thing to her, and her 
eyes, being preternaturally keen in such matters, see 
not only the change in you, but what is infinitely 
sadder, the changed reflection of herself. Your eyes 
have revealed the shock you have experienced. You 
cannot hide it; her heart is stabbed with a sudden 
pain, and she is filled with shame and confusion; and 
the pain is but greater if her life has glided smoothly 
— if she cannot appeal to your compassion, finding a 
melancholy relief in that saddest cry: — 

O Grief has changed me since you saw me last! 

For not grief, nor sickness, nor want, nor care, nor 

i68 



Bath and Wells Revisited 

any misery or calamity which men fear, is her chief 
enemy. Time alone she hates and fears — insidious 
Time who has lulled her mind with pleasant flatteries 
all these years while subtly taking away her most 
valued possessions, the bloom and colour, the grace, 
the sparkle, the charm of other years. 

Here is a true and pretty little story, which may or 
may not exactly fit the theme, but is very well worth 
telling. A lady of fashion, middle-aged or there- 
abouts, good-looking but pale and with the marks of 
care and disillusionment on her expressive face, ac- 
companied by her pretty sixteen-years-old daughter, 
one day called on an artist and asked him to show her 
his studio. He was a very great artist, the greatest 
portrait-painter we have ever had and he did not 
know who she was, but with the sweet courtesy which 
distinguished him through all his long life — he died 
recently at a very advanced age — he at once put his 
work away and took her round his studio to show 
her everything he thought would interest her. But 
she was restless and inattentive, and by and by leaving 
the artist talking to her young daughter she began 
going round by herself, moving constantly from pic- 
ture to picture. Presently she made an exclamation, 
and turning they saw her standing before a picture, a 
portrait of a girl, staring fixedly at it. "Oh," she 
cried, and it was a cry of pain, "was I once as beauti- 
ful as that?" and burst into tears. She had found 
the picture she had been looking for, which she had 
come to see; it had been there twenty to twenty-five 
years, and the story of it was as follows. 

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Afoot in England 

When she was a young girl her mother took her to 
the great artist to have her portrait painted, and when 
the work was at length finished she and her mother 
went to see it. The artist put it before them and the 
mother looked at it, her face expressing displeasure, 
and said not one word. Nor did the artist open his 
lips. And at last the girl, to break the uncomfortable 
silence, said, "Where shall we hang it, mother?" and 
the lady replied, "Just where you like, my dear, so 
long as you hang it with the face to the wall." It 
was an insolent, a cruel thing to say, but the artist 
did not answer her bitterly; he said gently that she 
need not take the portrait as it failed to please her, 
and that in any case he would decline to take the 
money she had agreed to pay him for the work. She 
thanked him coldly and went her way, and he never 
saw her again. And now Time, the humbler of 
proud beautiful women, had given him his revenge: 
the portrait, scorned and rejected when the colour 
and sparkle of life was in the face, had been looked 
on once more by its subject and had caused her to 
weep at the change in herself. 

To return. One wishes in these moments of meet- 
ing, of surprise and sudden revealings, that it were 
permissible to speak from the heart, since then the 
very truth might have more balm than bitterness in 
it. "Grieve not, dear friend of old days, that I have 
not escaped the illusion common to all — the idea that 
those we have not looked on this long time — full five 
years, let us say — ^have remained as they were while 
we ourselves have been moving onwards and down- 

170 



Bath and Wells Revisited 

vvards in that path in which our feet are set. No one, 
however hardened he may be, can escape a shock of 
surprise and pain; but now the illusion I cherished 
has gone — now I have seen with my physical eyes, 
and a new image, with Time's writing on it, has 
taken the place of the old and brighter one, I would 
not have it otherwise. No, not if I could would I 
call back the vanished lustre, since all these changes, 
above all that wistful look in the eyes, do but serve 
to make you dearer, my sister and friend and fellow- 
traveller in a land where we cannot find a permanent 
resting-place." 

Alas ! it cannot be spoken, and we cannot comfort 
a sister if she cannot divine the thought; but to 
brood over these inevitable changes is as idle as it is 
to lament that we were born into this mutable world. 
After all, it is because of the losses, the sadnesses, that 
the world is so infinitely sweet to us. The thought 
is in Cory's Mimnernus in Church: — ■ 

All beauteous things for which we live 
By laws of time and space decay. 
But oh, the very reason why 
I clasp them is because they die. 

From this sadness in Bath I went to a greater in 
Wells, where I had not been for ten years, and timing 
my visit so as to have a Sunday service at the cathe- 
dral of beautiful memories, I went on a Saturday to 
Shepton Mallet. A small, squalid town, a "manu- 
facturing town" the guide-book calls it. Well, yes; 
it manufactures Anglo-Bavarian beer in a gigantic 

171 



Afoot in Rn gland 

brewery which looks bigger than all the other build- 
ings together, the church and a dozen or twenty 
public-houses Included. To get some food I went 
to the only eating-house in the place, and saw a 
pleasant-looking woman, plump and high-coloured, 
with black hair, with an expression of good humour 
and goodness of every description in her comely 
countenance. She promised to have a chop ready 
by the time I had finished looking at the church, and 
I said I would have it with a small Guinness. She 
could not provide that^ the house, she said, was strictly 
temperance. "My doctor has ordered me to take 
it," said I, "and if you are religious, remember that 
St. Paul tells us to take a Httle stout when we find it 
beneficial." 

"Yes, I know that's what St. Paul says," she re- 
turned, with a heightened colour and a vicious 
emphasis on the saint's name, "but we go on a 
different principle." 

So I had to go for my lunch to one of the big 
public-houses, called hotels; but whether it called 
itself a cow, or horse, or stag, or angel, or a blue or 
green something, I cannot remember. They gave 
me what they called a beefsteak pie — a tough crust 
and under it some blackish cubes carved out of the 
muscle of an antediluvian ox — and for this delicious 
fare and a glass of stout I paid three shillings and 
odd pence. 

As I came away Shepton Mallet was shaken to its 
foundations by a tremendous and most diabolical 
sound, a prolonged lupine yell or yowl, as if a 

172 



Bath and Wells Revisited 

stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the Anglo-Bavarian 
brewery, had howled his loudest and longest. This 
infernal row, which makes Shepton seem like a town 
or village gone raving mad, was merely to inform the 
men, an,d, incidentally, the universe, that it was time 
for them to knock off work. 

Turning my back on the place, I said to myself, 
"What a fool I am to be sure ! Why could I not 
have been satisfied for once with a cup of coffee with 
my lunch? I should have saved a shilling, perhaps 
eighteenpence, to rejoice the soul of some poor 
tramp; and, better still, I could have discussed some 
interesting questions with that charming rosy-faced 
woman. What, for instance, was the reason of her 
quarrel with the apostle; by the by, she never re- 
buked me for misquoting his words; and what is the 
moral effect (as seen through her clear brown eyes) 
of the Anglo-Bavarian brewery on the population of 
the small town and the neighbouring villages?" 

The road I followed from Shepton to Wells 
winds by the water-side, a tributary of the Brue, in 
a narrow valley with hills on either side. It is a five- 
mile road through a beautiful country, where there is 
practically no cultivation, and the green hills, with 
brown woods in their hollows, and here and there 
huge masses of grey and reddish Bath stone cropping 
out on their sides, resembling gigantic castles and ram- 
parts, long ruined and overgrown with ivy and bram- 
ble, produce the effect of a land dispeopled and gone 
back to a state of wildness. 

A thaw had come that morning, ending the severest 



Afoot in England 

frost experienced this winter anywhere in England, 
and the valley was alive with birds, happy and tune- 
ful at the end of January as in April. Looking 
down on the stream the sudden glory of a kingfisher 
passed before me; but the sooty-brown water-ouzel 
with his white bib, a haunter, too, of this water, I 
did not see. Within a mile or so of Wells I over- 
took a small boy who belonged there, and had been 
to Shepton like me, noticing the birds. "I saw a 
kingfisher," I said. "So did I," he returned quickly, 
with pride. He described it as a biggish bird with a 
long neck, but its colour was not blue — oh, no! I 
suggested that it was a heron, a long-necked creature 
under six feet high, of no particular colour. No, it 
was not a heron; and after taking thought, he said, 
"I think it was a wild duck." 

Bestowing a penny to encourage him in his promis- 
ing researches into the feathered world, I went on by 
a footpath over a hill, and as I mounted to the higher 
ground there before me rose the noble tower of St. 
Cuthbert's Church, and a little to the right of it, girt 
with high trees, the magnificent pile of the cathedral, 
with green hills and the pale sky beyond. O joy to 
look again on it, to add yet one more enduring image 
of it to the number I had long treasured! For the 
others were not exactly like this one; the building 
was not looked at from the same point of view at the 
same season and late hour, with the green hills lit 
by the departing sun and the clear pale winter sky 
beyond. 

Coming in by the moated palace I stood once more 

174 



Bath and Wells Revisited 

on the Green before that west front, beautiful beyond 
all others, in spite of the strange defeatures Time has 
written on it. I watched the daws, numerous as 
ever, still at their old mad games, now springing into 
the air to scatter abroad with ringing cries, only to 
return the next minute and fling themselves back on 
their old perches on a hundred weather-stained broken 
statues in the niches. And while I stood watching 
them from the palace trees close by came the loud 
laugh of the green woodpecker. The same wild, 
beautiful sound, uttered perhaps by the same bird, 
which I had often heard at that spot ten years ago! 
"You will not hear that woodland sound in any other 
city in the kingdom," I wrote in a book of sketches 
entitled Birds and Man, published in 1901. 

But of my soul's adventures in Wells on the two 
or three following days I will say very little. That 
laugh of the woodpecker was an assurance that Nature 
had suffered no change, and the town too, like the 
hills and rocks and running waters, seemed un- 
changed; but how different and how sad when I 
looked for those I once knew, whose hands I had 
hoped to grasp again! Yes, some were living still; 
and a dog too, one I used to take out for long walks 
and many a mad rabbit-hunt — a very handsome white- 
and-liver coloured spaniel. I found him lying on a 
sofa, and down he got and wagged his tail vigorously, 
pretending, with a pretty human hypocrisy in his gentle 
yellow eyes, that he knew me perfectly well, that I was 
not a bit changed, and that he was delighted to see me. 

On my way back to Bath I had a day at Bristol. 



Afoot in England 

It was cattle-market day, and what with the bellow- 
ings, barkings, and shoutings, added to the buzz and 
clang of innumerable electric tramcars and the usual 
din of street traffic, one got the idea that the Bris- 
tolians had adopted a sort of Salvation Army theory, 
and were endeavouring to conquer earth (it is not 
heaven in this case) by making a tremendous noise. 
I amused myself strolling about and watching the 
people, and as train after train came in late in the 
day discharging loads of humanity, mostly young 
men and women from the surrounding country com- 
ing in for an evening's amusement, I noticed again 
the peculiarly Welsh character of the Somerset peasant 
— the shape of the face, the colour of the skin, and, 
above all, the expression. 

Freeman, when here below, proclaimed it his mis- 
sion to prove that "Englishmen were Englishmen, 
and not somebody else." It appeared to me that any 
person, unbiassed by theories on such a subject, look- 
ing at that crowd, would have come to the conclusion, 
sadly or gladly, according to his nature, that we are, 
in fact, "somebody else." 



176 



Chapter Fourteen: The Return of 

the Native 

That "going back" about which I wrote in the second 
chapter to a place where an unexpected beauty or 
charm has revealed itself, and has made its image a 
lasting and prized possession of the mind, is not the 
same thing as the revisiting a famous town or city, 
rich in many beauties and old memories, such as Bath 
or Wells, for instance. Such centres have a permanent 
attraction, and one who is a rover in the land must 
return to them again and again, nor does he fail on 
each successive visit to find some fresh charm or in- 
terest. The sadness of such returns, after a long in- 
terval, is only, as I have said, when we start "looking 
up" those with whom we had formed pleasant 
friendly relations. And all because of the illusion 
that we shall see them as they were — that Time has 
stood still waiting for our return, and by and by, to 
our surprise and grief, we discover that it is not so; 
that the dear friends of other days, long unvisited 
but unforgotten, have become strangers. This hu- 
man loss is felt even more In the case of a return 
to some small centre, a village or hamlet where we 
knew every one, and our Intimacy with the people 
has produced the sense of being one in blood with 
them. It is greatest of all when we return to a child- 
hood's or boyhood's home. Many writers have occu- 
pied themselves with this mournful theme, and I 

177 



Afoot in Kn gland 

imagine that a person of the proper Amiel-like tender 
and melancholy morahzing type of mind, by using 
his own and his friends' experiences, could write a 
charmingly sad and pretty book on the subject. 

The really happy returns of this kind must be ex- 
ceedingly rare. I am almost surprised to think that 
I am able to recall as many as two, but they hardly 
count, as in both instances the departure or exile 
from home happens at so early a time of life that no 
recollections of the people survived — nothing, in fact, 
but a vague mental picture of the place. One was of 
a business man I knew in London, who lost his early 
home in a village in the Midlands, as a boy of eight 
or nine years of age, through the sale of the place by 
his father, who had become impoverished. The boy 
was trained to business in London, and when a 
middle-aged man, wishing to retire and spend the rest 
of his life in the country, he revisited his native 
village for the first time, and dicovered to his joy 
that he could buy back the old home. He was, 
when I last saw him, very happy in its possession. 

The other case I will relate more fully, as it Is a 
very curious one, and came to my knowledge in a 
singular way. 

At a small station near Eastleigh a man wearing a 
highly pleased expression on his face entered the 
smoking-carriage in which I was travelling to London. 
Putting his bag on the rack, he pulled out his pipe 
and threw himself back in his seat with a satisfied air; 
then, leaking at me and catching my eye, he at once 
started talking. I had my newspaper, but seeing him 

178 



The Return of the Native 

in that overflowing mood I responded readily enough, 
for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy 
and who and what he was. Not a tradesman nor a 
bagman, and not a farmer, though he looked like an 
open-air man; nor could I form a guess from his 
speech and manner as to his native place. A robust 
man of thirty-eight or forty, with blue eyes and a 
Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman, and 
yet he struck me as most un-English in his lively, 
almost eager manner, his freedom with a stranger, 
and something, too, in his speech. From time to 
time his face lighted up, when, looking to the 
window, his eyes rested on some pretty scene — a 
glimpse of stately old elm trees in a field where cattle 
were grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk 
stream, the paler hills beyond, the grey church tower 
or spire of some tree-hidden village. When he dis- 
covered that these hills and streams and rustic villages 
had as great a charm for me as for himself, that I 
knew and loved the two or three places he named in 
a questioning way, he opened his heart and the secret 
of his present happiness. 

He was a native of the district, born at a farm- 
house of which his father in succession to his grand- 
father had been the tenant. It was a small farm of 
only eighty-five acres, and as his father could make 
no more than a bare livelihood out of it, he eventually 
gave it up when my informant was but three years 
old, and selling all he had, emigrated to Australia. 
Nine years later he died, leaving a numerous family 
poorly provided for; the home was broken up and 

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Afoot in England 

boys an,d girls had to go out and face the world. 
They had somehow all got on very well, and his 
brothers and sisters were happy enough out there, 
Australians in mind, thoroughly persuaded that theirs 
was the better land, the best country in the world, 
and with no desire to visit England. He had never 
felt like that; somehow his father's feeling about the 
old country had taken such a hold of him that he 
never outlived it — never felt at home in Australia, 
however successful he was in his affairs. The home 
feeling had been very strong in his father; his greatest 
delight was to sit of an evening with his children 
round him and tell them of the farm and the old 
farm-house where he was born and had lived so many 
years, and where some of them too had been born. 
He was never tired of talking of it, of taking them 
by the hand, as it were, and leading them from place 
to place, to the stream, the village, the old stone 
church, the meadows and fields and hedges, the deep 
shady lanes, and, above all, to the dear old ivied 
house with its gables and tall chimneys. So many 
times had his father described it that the old place 
was printed like a map on his mind, and was like a 
picture which kept its brightness even after the image 
of his boyhood's home in Australia had become faded 
and pale. With that mental picture to guide him he 
believed that he could go to that angle by the porch 
where the flycatchers bred every year and find their 
nest; where in the hedge the blackberries were most 
abundant; where the elders grew by the stream from 
which he could watch the moorhens and watervoles; 

i8o 



The Return of the Native 

that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse, every 
room and passage in the old house. Through all his 
busy years that picture never grew less beautiful, 
never ceased its call, and at last, possessed of sufficient 
capital to yield him a modest income for the rest of 
his life, he came home. What he was going to do 
in England he did not consider. He only knew that 
until he had satisfied the chief desire of his heart 
and had looked upon the original of the picture he 
had borne so long in his mind he could not rest nor 
make any plans for the future. 

He came first to London and found, on examining 
the map of Hampshire, that the village of Thorpe 
(I will call it) , where he was born, is three miles from 
the nearest station, in the southern part of the county. 
Undoubtedly it was Thorpe; that was one of the 
few names of places his father had mentioned which 
remained in his memory always associated with that 
vivid image of the farm in his mind. To Thorpe 
he accordingly went — as pretty a rustic village as he 
had hoped to find it. He took a room at the inn 
and went out for a long walk — "just to see the 
place," he said to the landlord. He would make no 
inquiries; he would find his home for himself; how 
could he fail to recognize it? But he walked for 
hours in a widening circle and saw no farm or other 
house, and no ground that corresponded to the pic- 
ture in his brain. 

Troubled at his failure, he went back and questioned 
his landlord, and, naturally, was asked for the name 
of the farm he was seeking. He had forgotten the 

i8i 



Afoot in England 

name — he even doubted that he had ever heard it. 
But there was his family name to go by — Dyson; 
did any one remember a farmer Dyson in the village? 
He was told that it was not an uncommon name in 
that part of the country. There were no Dysons 
now in Thorpe, but some fifteen or twenty years ago 
one of that name had been the tenant of Long 
Meadow Farm in the parish. The name of the farm 
was unfamiliar, and when he visited the place he 
found it was not the one he sought. 

It was a grievous disappointment. A new sense 
of loneliness oppressed him; for that bright image 
in his mind, with the feeling about his home, had 
been a secret source of comfort and happiness, and 
was like a companion, a dear human friend, and now 
he appeared to be on the point of losing it. Could 
it be that all that mental picture, with the details that 
seemed so true to life, was purely imaginary? He 
could not believe it; the old house had probably 
been pulled down, the big trees felled, orchard and 
hedges grubbed up — all the old features obliterated — 
and the land thrown into some larger neighbouring 
farm. It was dreadful to think that such devastating 
changes had been made, but it had certainly existed 
as he saw it in his mind, and he would inquire of 
some of the old men in the place, who would perhaps 
be able to tell him where his home had stood thirty 
years ago. 

At once he set about interviewing all the old men 
he came upon in his rounds, describing to them the 
farm tenanted by a man named Dyson about forty 

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The Return of the Native 

years ago, and by and by he got hold of one who knew. 
He listened for a few minutes to the oft-repeated 
story, then exclaimed, "Why, sir, 'tis surely Woodyates 
you be talking about!" 

"That's the name! That's the name," he cried. 
"Woodyates — how did I ever forget it ! You knew 
it then — where was it?" 

"I'll just show you," said the old man, proud at 
having guessed rightly, and turning started slowly 
hobbling along till he got to the end of the lane. 

There was an opening there and a view of the valley 
with trees, blue in the distance, at the furthest visible 
point. "Do you see them trees?" he said. "That's 
where Harping is; 'tis two miles or, perhaps, a little 
more from Thorpe. There's a church tower among 
them trees, but you can't see it because 'tis hid. You 
go by the road till you comes to the church, then you 
go on by the water, maybe a quarter of a mile, and 
you comes to Woodyates. You won't see no differ- 
ence in it; I've knowed it since I were a boy, but 'tis 
in Harping parish, not in Thorpe." 

Now he remembered the name — Harping, near 
Thorpe — only Thorpe was the more important village 
where the inn was and the shops. 

In less than an hour after leaving his informant he 
was at Woodyates, feasting his eyes on the old house 
of his dreams and of his exiled father's before him, 
inexpressibly glad to recognize it as the very house he 
had loved so long — that he had been deceived by no 
false image. 

For some days he haunted the spot, then became a 

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Afoot in England 

lodger at the farm-house, and now after making some 
Inquiries he had found that the owner was willing to 
sell the place for something more than its marlcet 
value, and he was going up to London about it. 

At Waterloo I wished him happiness in his old 
home found again after so many years, then watched 
him as he walked briskly away — as commonplace- 
looking a man as could be seen on that busy crowded 
platform, in his suit of rough grey tweeds, thick 
boots, and bowler hat. Yet one whose fortune might 
be envied by many even among the successful — one 
who had cherished a secret thought and feeling, which 
had been to him like the shadow of a rock and like a 
cool spring in a dry and thirsty land. 

And in that host of undistinguished Colonials and 
others of 'British race from all regions of the earth, 
who annually visit these shores on business or for 
pleasure or some other object, how many there must 
be who come with some such memory or dream or 
aspiration in their hearts ! A greater number probably 
than we imagine. For most of them there is doubt- 
less disappointment and disillusion: it is a matter of 
the heart, a sentiment about which some are not given 
to speak. He too, my fellow-passenger, would no 
doubt have held his peace had his dream not met with 
so perfect a fulfilment. As it was he had to tell his 
joy to some one, though it were to a stranger. 



184 



Chapter Fifteen: Summer Days 
on the Otter 

The most characteristic district of South Devon, the 
greenest, most luxuriant in its vegetation, and per- 
haps the hottest in England, is that bit of country 
between the Exe and the Axe which is watered by 
the Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid. In any one of a 
dozen villages found beside these pretty little rivers a 
man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very 
agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on the 
good fortune which first led him into such a garden. 
Yet after a week or two in this luxurious land I be- 
gan to be dissatisfied with -my surroundings. It was 
June; the weather was exceptionally dry and sultry. 
Vague thoughts, or "visitings" of mountains and moors 
and coasts would intrude to make the confinement of 
deep lanes seem increasingly irksome. Each day I 
wandered miles in some new direction, never knowing 
whither the devious path would lead me, never in- 
quiring of any person, nor consulting map or guide, 
since to do that is to deprive oneself of the pleasure 
of discovery; always with a secret wish to find some 
exit as it were — some place beyond the everlasting wall 
of high hedges and green trees, where there would be a 
wide horizon and wind blowing unobstructed over 
leagues of open country to bring me back the sense of 
lost liberty. I found only fresh woods and pastures 
new that were like the old ; other lanes leading to other 

185 



Afoot in England 

farm-houses, each in its familiar pretty setting of or- 
chard and garden; and, finally, other ancient villages, 
each with its ivy-grown grey church to.wer look- 
ing down on a green graveyard and scattered 
cottages, mostly mud-built and thatched with straw. 
Finding no outlook on any side I went back to the 
streams, oftenest to the Otter, where, lying by the hour 
on the bank, I watched the speckled trout below me 
and the dark-plumaged dipper with shining white 
breast standing solitary and curtseying on a stone 
in the middle of the current. Sometimes a kingfisher 
would flash by, and occasionally I came upon a lonely 
grey heron; but no mammal bigger than a» water- 
vole appeared, although I waited and watched for the 
much bigger beast that gives the river its name. 
Still it was good to know that he was there, and had 
his den somewhere in the steep rocky bank under the 
rough tangle of ivy and bramble and roots of over- 
hanging trees. One was shot by a farmer during my 
stay, but my desire was for the living, not a dead 
otter. Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with 
blaze of scarlet coats and blowing of brass horns and 
noise of barking hounds and shouts of excited people, 
it had no sooner got half a mile above Ottery St. 
Mary, where I had joined the straggling procession, 
than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of me 
and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been 
found. The frightened moorhen stole back to her 
spotty eggs, the dipper returned to his dipping and 
curtseying to his own image in the stream, and I to 
my idle dreaming and watching. 

i86 



Summer Days on the Otter 

The watching was not wholly in vain, since there 
were here revealed to me things, or aspects of things, 
that were new. A great deal depends on atmosphere 
and the angle of vision. For instance, I have often 
looked at swans at the hour of sunset, on the water 
and off it, or flying, and have frequently had them 
between me and the level sun, yet never have I been 
favoured with the sight of the rose-coloured, the red, 
and the golden-yellow varieties of that majestic water- 
fowl, whose natural colour is white. On the other 
hand, who ever saw a carrion-crow with crimson 
eyes? Yet that was one of the strange things I wit- 
nessed on the Otter, 

Game is not everywhere strictly preserved in that 
part of Devon, and the result is that the crow is not 
so abhorred and persecuted a fowl as in many places, 
especially in the home counties, where the cult of the 
sacred bird is almost universal. At one spot on the 
stream where my rambles took me on most days a 
pair of crows invariably greeted my approach with 
a loud harsh remonstrance, and would keep near me, 
flying from tree to tree repeating their angry girdings 
until I left the place. Their nest was in a large elm, 
and after some days I was pleased to see that the 
young had been safely brought off. The old birdsi 
screamed at me no more; then I came on one of 
their young in the meadow near the river. His 
curious behaviour interested me so much that I stood 
and watched him for half an hour or longer. It was 
a hot, windless day, and the bird was by himself 
among the tall flowering grasses and buttercups of 

187 



Afoot in England 

the meadow — a queer gaunt unfinished hobbledehoy- 
looking fowl with a head much too big for his body, 
a beak that resembled a huge nose, and a very mon- 
strous mouth. When I first noticed him he was 
amusing himself by picking off the small Insects from 
the flowers with his big beak, a most unsuitable 
Instrument, one would Imagine, for so delicate a task. 
At the same time he was hungering for more sub- 
stantial fare, and every time a rook flew by over him 
on Its way to or from a neighbouring too populous 
rookery, the young crow would open wide his Im- 
mense red mouth and emit his harsh, throaty hunger- 
call. The rook gone, he would drop once more into 
his study of the buttercups, to pick from them what- 
ever unconsidered trifle In the way of provender 
he could find. Once a small bird, a pied wagtail, 
flew near him, and he begged from it just as he had 
done from the rooks: the little creature would have 
run the risk of being itself swallowed had it attempted 
to deliver a packet of flies Into that cavernous mouth. 
I went nearer, moving cautiously, until I was within* 
about four yards of him, when, half turning, he 
opened his mouth and squawked, actually asking me to 
feed him; then, growing suspicious, he hopped awk- 
wardly away in the grass. Eventually he permitted a 
nearer approach, and slowly stooping I was just on the 
point of stroking his back when, suddenly becoming 
alarmed, he swung himself into the air and flapped 
laboriously off to a low hawthorn, twenty or thirty 
yards away, Into which he tumbled pell-mell like a 
bundle of old black rags. 

i88 



Summer Days on the Otter 

Then I left him and thought no more about the 
crows except that their young have a good deal to 
learn upon first coming forth into an unfriendly- 
world. But there was a second nest and family close 
by all the time. A day or two later I discovered it 
accidentally in a very curious way. 

There was one spot where I was accustomed to 
linger for a few minutes, sometimes for half an hour 
or so, during my daily walks. Here at the foot of 
the low bank on the treeless side of the stream there 
was a scanty patch of sedges, a most exposed and 
unsuitable place for any bird to breed in, yet a 
venturesome moorhen had her nest there and was 
now sitting on seven eggs. First I would take a 
peep at the eggs, for the bird always quitted the 
nest on my approach; then I would gaze into the 
dense tangle of tree, bramble, and ivy springing out 
of the mass of black rock and red clay of the 
opposite bank. In the centre of this rough tangle 
which overhung the stream there grew an old 
stunted and crooked fir tree with its tufted top so 
shut out from the light by the branches and foliage 
round it that it looked almost black. One evening 
I sat down on the green bank opposite this tangle 
when the low sun behind me shone level into the 
mass of rock and rough boles and branches, and 
fixing my eyes on the black centre of the mass I 
encountered a pair of cfrimson eyes staring back 
into mine. A level ray of light had lit up that 
spot which I had always seen in deep shadow, reveal- 
ing its secret. After gazing steadily for some time 

189 



Afoot in England 

I made out a crow's nest In the dwarf pine top and 
the vague black forms of three young fully fledged 
crows sitting or standing in it. The middle bird 
had the shining crimson eyes; but in a few moments 
the illusory colour was gone and the eyes were black. 

It was certainly an extraordinary thing: the ragged- 
looking black-plumaged bird o>n its ragged nest of 
sticks in the deep shade, with one ray of intense sun- 
light on its huge nose-like beak and blood-red eyes, a 
sight to be remembered for a lifetime! It recalled 
Zurbaran's picture of the "Kneeling Monk," in which 
the man with everything about him is steeped in the 
deepest gloom except his nose, on which one ray of 
strong light has fallen. The picture of the monk is 
gloomy and austere in a wonderful degree: the crow 
in his interior with sunlit big beak and crimson eyes 
looked nothing less than diabolical. 

I paid other visits to the spot at the same hour, 
anid sat long and watched the crows while they watched 
me, occasionally tossing pebbles on to them to make 
them shift their positions, but the magical effect was 
not produced again. 

As to the cause of that extraordinary colour in 
the crow's eyes, one might say that it was merely 
the reflected red light of the level sun. We are 
familiar with the effect when polished and wet sur- 
faces, such as glass, stone, and water, shine crimson in 
the light of a setting sun; but there is also the 
fact, which is not well known, that the eye may 
show its own hidden red — the crimson colour which 
is at the back of the retina and which is commonly 

190 



Summer Days on the Otter 

supposed to be seen only with the ophthalmoscope. 
Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends and 
acquaintances that there are instances of persons in 
which the iris when directly in front of the observer 
with the light behind him. always* looks crimson, and 
in several of these cases* the persons, exhibiting this 
co-lour, or danger signal, as it may be called, were 
su'bject to brain trouble. If is. curious to find that 
the crimson colour or light has also been observed 
in dogs : one friend has told me of a pet King 
Charles, a lively good-tempered little dog- with brown 
eyes like any other dog, which yet. when they looked 
up* into yours in a room always shone ruby-red 
instead of hyaline blue, or green, as is usually the 
case. From other friends I heard of many other 
cases : one was of a child, an infant in arms, whose 
eyes sometimes appeared crimson, another of a cat 
with yellow eyes which shone crimson-red in certain 
lights. Of human adults, I heard of two men great 
in the world of science, both dead now, in whose 
eyes the red light had been seen just before and 
during attacks of nervous breakdown. I heard also 
of four other persons., not distinguished in any way, 
two of them sisters, who showed the red light in 
the eyes : all of them suffered from brain trouble 
and two of them ended their lives in asylums for the 
insane. 

Discussing these cases with my informants, we came 
to the conclusion that the red light in the human 
eye is probably always a pathological condition, a 
danger signal; but it is not perhaps safe to generalize 

191 



Afoot in England 

on these few instances, and I must add that all the 
medical men I have spoken to on the subject shake 
their heads. One great man, an eye specialist, went 
so far as to say that it is impossible, that the red 
light in the eye was not seen by my informants but 
only imagined. The ophthalmoscope, he said, will 
show you the crimson at the back of the eye, but 
the colour is not and cannot be reflected on the sur- 
face of the iris. 



192 



Chapter Sixteen: In Praise of the 

Cow 

In spite of discontents I might have remained to 
this day by the Otter, in the daily and hourly 
expectation of seeing some new and wonderful 
thing in Nature in that place where a crimson-eyed 
carrion-crow had been revealed to me, had not a 
storm of thunder and rain broken over the country 
to shake me out of a growing disinclination to move. 
We are, body and mind, very responsive to atmos- 
pheric changes; for every storm in Nature there is 
a storm in us — a change physical and mental. We 
make our own conditions, it is true, and these react 
and have a deadening effect on us in the long run, 
but we are never wholly deadened by them — if we 
be not indeed dead, if the life we live can be called 
life. We are told that there are rainless zones on 
the earth and regions of everlasting summer: it is hard 
to believe that the dwellers in such places can ever 
think a new thought or do a new thing. 

The morning rain did not last very long, and before 
it had quite ceased I took up my knapsack and set oft 
towards the sea, determined on this occasion to make 
my escape. 

Three or four miles from Ottery St. Mary I over- 
took a cowman driving nine milch cows along a deep 
lane and inquired my way of him. He gave me many 
and minute directions, after which we got into con- 



Afoot In England 

versation, and I walked some distance with him. 

The cows he was driving were all pure Devons, 
perfect beauties in their bright red coats in that green- 
est place where every rain-wet leaf sparkled in the new 
sunlight. Naturally we talked about the cows, and I 
soon found that they were his own and the pride and 
joy of his life. We walked leisurely, and as the ani- 
mals went on, first one, then another would stay for a 
mouthful of grass, or to pull down half a yard of green 
drapery from the hedge. It was so lavishly decorated 
that the damage they did to it was not noticeable. By 
and by we went on ahead of the cows, then, if one 
stayed too long or strayed into some inviting side-lane, 
he would turn and utter a long, soft call, whereupon 
the straggler would leave her browsing and hasten 
after the others. 

He was a big, strongly built man, a little past 
middle life and grey-haired, with rough-hewn face — 
unprepossessing one would have pronounced him until 
the intelligent, kindly expression of the eyes was seen 
and the agreeable voice was heard. As our talk pro- 
gressed and we found how much in sympathy we were 
on the subject, I was reminded of that Biblical expres- 
sion about the shining of a man's face: "Wine that 
maketh glad the heart of man" — I hope the total 
abstainers will pardon me — "and oil that maketh his 
face to shine," we have In one passage. This rather 
goes against our British Ideas, since we rub no oil or 
unguents on our skin, but only soap which deprives 
it of Its natural oil and too often Imparts a dry 
and hard texture. Yet In that, to us, disagreeable 

194 



In Praise of the Cow 

aspect of the skin caused by foreign fats, there is a 
resemblance to the sudden brightening and glory of the 
countenance in moments of blissful emotion or exal- 
tation. No doubt the effect is produced by the eyes, 
which are the mirrors of the mind, and as they are 
turned full upon us they produce an illusion, seeming to 
make the whole face shine. 

In our talk I told him of long rambles on the Men- 
dips, along the valley of the Somerset Axe, where I had 
lately been, and where of all places, in this island, the 
cow should be most esteemed and loved by man. Yet 
even there, where, standing on some elevation, cows 
beyond one's power to number could be seen scattered 
far and wide in the green vales beneath, it had sad- 
dened me to find them so silent. It is not natural for 
them to be dumb; they have great emotions and mighty 
voices — the cattle on a thousand hills. Their morning 
and evening lowing is more to me than any other 
natural sound — the melody of birds, the springs and 
dying gales of the pines, the wash of waves on the 
long shingled beach. The hills and valleys of that 
pastoral country flowing with milk and honey should 
be vocal with it, echoing and re-echoing the long call 
made musical by distance. The cattle are compara- 
tively silent in that beautiful district, and indeed every- 
where in England, because men have made them so. 
They have, when deprived of their calves, no motive 
for the exercise of their voices. For two or three 
days after their new-born calves have been taken from 
fhem they call loudly and incessantly, day and night, 
like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be 



Afoot in England 

comforted; grief and anxiety inspires that cry — they 
grow hoarse with crying; it is a powerful, harsh, dis- 
cordant sound, unhke the long musical call of the cow 
that has a calf, and remembering it, and leaving the 
pasture, goes lowing to give it suck. 

I also told him of the cows of a distant country 
where I had lived, that had the maternal instinct so 
strong that they refused to yield their milk when de- 
prived of their young. They "held it back," as the 
saying is, and were in a sullen rage, and in a few days 
their fountains dried up, and there was no more 
milk until calving-time came round once more. 

He replied that cows of that temper were not un- 
known in South Devon. Very proudly he pointed to 
one of the small herd that followed us as an example. 
In most cases, he said, the calf was left from two or 
three days to a week, or longer, with the mother to get 
strong, and then taken away. This plan could not be 
always followed; some cows were so greatly distressed 
at losing the young they had once suckled that precau- 
tions had to be taken and the calf smuggled away as 
quietly as possible when dropped — if possible before 
the mother had seen it. Then there were the ex- 
treme cases in which the cow refused to be cheated. 
She knew that a calf had been born; she had felt it 
within her, and had suffered pangs in bringing it forth; 
if it appeared not on the grass or straw at her side then 
it must have been snatched away by the human crea- 
tures that hovered about her, like crows and ravens 
round a ewe in travail on some lonely mountain side. 

196 



In Praise of the Cow 

That was the character of the cow he had pointed out; 
even when she had not seen the calf of which she had 
been deprived she made so great an outcry and was 
thrown into such a rage and fever, refusing to be milked 
that, finally, to save her, it was thought necessary 
to give her back the calf. Now, he concluded, it was 
not attempted to take it away: twice a day she was al- 
lowed to have it with her and suckle it, and she was a 
very happy animal. 

I was glad to think that there was at least one com- 
pletely happy cow in Devonshire. 

After leaving the cowkeeper I had that feeling of 
revulsion very strongly which all who know and love 
cows occasionally experience at the very thought of 
beef. I was for the moment more than tolerant of 
vegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that for many days 
to come I should not be sickened with the sight of a 
sirloin on some hateful board, cold, or smoking hot, 
bleeding its red juices into the dish when gashed with 
a knife, as if undergoing a second death. We do not 
eat negroes, although their pigmented skins, flat feet, 
and woolly heads proclaim them a different species; 
even monkey's flesh is abhorrent to us, merely because 
we fancy that that creature in its ugliness resembles 
some old men and some women and children that we 
know. But the gentle large-brained social cow that 
caresses our hands and faces with her rough blue 
tongue, and is more like man's sister than any other 
non-human being — the majestic, beautiful creature 
with the juno eyes, sweeter of breath than the rosiest 

197 



Afoot in England 

virgin — we slaughter and feed on her flesh — monsters 
and cannibals that we are! 

But though cannibals, it is very pleasant to find that 
many cowmen love their cows. Walking one after- 
noon by a high unkept hedge near Southampton Water, 
I heard loud shouts at intervals issuing from a point 
some distance ahead, and on arriving at the spot found 
an old man leaning idly over a gate, apparently con- 
cerned about nothing. "What are you shouting 
about?" I demanded. "Cows," he answered, with 
a glance across the wide green field dotted with a few 
big furze and bramble bushes. On its far side half 
a dozen cows were quietly grazing. "They came 
fast enough when I was a-feeding of 'em," he presently 
added; "but now they has to find for theirselves they 
don't care how long they keeps me." I was going 
to suggest that it would be a considerable saving of time 
if he went for them, but his air of lazy contentment 
as he leant on the gate showed that time was of no 
importance to him. He was a curious-looking old 
man, in old frayed clothes, broken boots, and a cap 
too small for him. He had short legs, broad chest, 
and long arms, and a very big head, long and horse- 
like, with a large shapeless nose and grizzled beard 
and moustache. His ears, too, were enormous, and 
stood out from the head like the handles of a rudely 
shaped terra-cotta vase or jar. The colour of his 
face, the ears included, suggested burnt clay. But 
though Nature had made him ugly, he had an agree- 
able expression, a sweet benign look in his large dark 
eyes, which attracted me, and I stayed to talk with him. 

198 



In Praise of the Cow 

It has frequently been said that those who are much 
with cows, and have an affection for them, appear 
to catch something of their expression — to look like 
cows; just as persons of sympathetic or responsive 
nature, and great mobility of face, grow to be like 
those they live and are in sympathy with. The cow- 
man who looks like a cow may be more bovine than 
his fellows in his heavier motions and slower appre- 
hensions, but he also exhibits some of the better quali- 
ties — the repose and placidity of the animal. 

He said that he was over seventy, and had spent the 
whole of his life in the neighbourhood, mostly with 
cows, and had never been more than a dozen miles 
from the spot where we were standing. At intervals 
while we talked he paused to utter one of his long 
shouts, to which the cows paid no attention. At 
length one of the beasts raised her head and had a long 
look, then slowly crossed the field to us, the others 
following at some distance. They were shorthorns, 
all but the leader, a beautiful young Devon, of a uni- 
form rich glossy red; but the silky hair on the dis- 
tended udder was of an intense chestnut, and all the 
parts that were not clothed were red too — the teats, 
the skin round the eyes, the moist embossed nose; 
while the hoofs were like polished red pebbles, and 
even the shapely horns were tinged with that colour. 
Walking straight up to the old man, she began delib- 
erately licking one of his ears with her big rough 
tongue, and in doing so knocked off his old rakish cap. 
Picking it up he laughed like a child, and remarked, 
"She knows me, this one does — and she loikes me," 

199 



Chapter Seventeen: An Old Road 
Leading Nowhere 

So many and minute were the directions I received 
about the way from the blessed cowkeeper, and so 
little attention did I give them, my mind being occu- 
pied with other things, that they were quiclcly forgotten. 
Of half a hundred things I remembered only that I 
had to "bear to the left." This I did, although it 
seemed useless, seeing that my way was by lanes, across 
fields, and through plantations. At length I came to 
a road, and as it happened to be on my left hand I 
followed it. It was narrow, worn deep by traffic and 
rains; and grew deeper, rougher, and more untrodden 
as I progressed, until it was like the dry bed of a moun- 
tain torrent, and I walked on boulder-stones between 
steep banks about fourteen feet high. Their sides 
were clothed with ferns, grass and rank moss; their 
summits were thickly wooded, and the interlacing 
branches of the trees above, mingled with long rope- 
like shoots of bramble and briar, formed so close a 
roof that I seemed to be walking in a dimly lighted 
tunnel. At length, thinking that I had kept long 
enough to a road which had perhaps not been used for 
a century, also tired of the monotony of always bear- 
ing to the left, I scrambled out on the right-hand side. 
For some time past I had been ascending a low, broad, 
flat-topped hill, and on forcing my way through the 

200 



An Old Road Leading Nowhere 

undergrowth into the open I found myself on the 
level plateau, an unenclosed spot overgrown with 
heather and scattered furze bushes, with clumps of fir 
and birch trees. Before me and on either hand at 
this elevation a vast extent of country was disclosed. 
The surface was everywhere broken, but there was no 
break in the wonderful greenness, which the recent 
rain had intensified. There is too much green, to 
my thinking, with too much uniformity in its soft, bright 
tone, in South Devon. After gazing on such a land- 
scape the brown, harsh, scanty vegetation of the hill- 
top seemed all the more grateful. The heath was an 
oasis and a refuge; I rambled about in it until my 
feet and legs were wet; then I sat down to let them 
dry and altogether spent several agreeable hours at 
that spot, pleased at the thought that no human fellow- 
creature would intrude upon me. Feathered compan- 
ions were, however, not wanting. The crowing of 
cock pheasants from the thicket beside the old road 
warned me that I was on preserved grounds. Not 
too strictly preserved, however, for there was my old 
friend the carrion-crow out foraging for his young. 
He dropped down over the trees, swept past me, and 
was gone. At this season, in the early summer, he 
may be easily distinguished, when flying, from his 
relation the rook. When on the prowl the crow glides 
smoothly and rapidly through the air, often changing 
his direction, now flying close to the surface, anon 
mounting high, but oftenest keeping nearly on a level 
with the tree tops. His gliding and curving motions 
are somewhat like those of the herring-gull, but the 

201 



Afoot in England 

wings in gliding are carried stiff and straight, the tips 
of the long flight-feathers showing a slight upward 
curve. But the greatest difference is in the way the 
head is carried. The rook, like the heron and stork, 
carries his beak pointing lance-like straight before him. 
He knows his destination, and makes for it; he follows 
his nose, so to speak, turning neither to the right nor 
the left. The foraging crow continually turns his 
head, gull-like and harrier-like, from side to side, as 
if to search the ground thoroughly or to concentrate 
his vision on some vaguely seen object. 

Not only the crow was there : a magpie chattered 
as I came from the brake, but refused to show him- 
self; and a little later a jay screamed at me, as only a 
jay can. There are times when I am intensely in 
sympathy with the feeling expressed in this ear-split- 
ting sound, inarticulate but human. It is at the same 
time warning and execration, the startled solitary's 
outburst of uncontrolled rage at the abhorred sight 
of a fellow-being in his woodland haunt. 

Small birds were numerous at that spot, as if for 
them also its wildness and infertility had an attraction. 
Tits, warblers, pipits, finches, all were busy ranging 
from place to place, emitting their various notes now 
from the tree-tops, then from near the ground; now 
close at hand, then far off; each change in the height, 
distance, and position of the singer giving the sound 
a different character, so that the effect produced was 
one of infinite variety. Only the yellow-hammer re- 
mained constant in one spot, in one position, and the 
song at each repetition was the same. Nevertheless 

202 



An Old Road Leading Nowhere 

this bird is not so monotonous a singer as he is reputed. 
A lover of open places, of commons and waste lands, 
with a bush or dwarf tree for tower to sit upon, he is 
yet one of the most common species in the thickly 
timbered country of the Otter, Clyst, and Sid, in which 
I had been rambling, hearing him every day and all 
day long. Throughout that district, where the fields 
are small, and the trees big and near together, he has 
the cirl-bunting's habit of perching to sing on the tops 
of high hedgerow elms and oaks. 

By and by I had a better bird to listen to — a red- 
start. A female flew down within fifteen yards of me; 
her mate followed and perched on a dry twig, where 
he remained a long time for so shy and restless a crea- 
ture. He was in perfect plumage, and sitting there, 
motionless in the strong sunlight, was wonderfully con- 
spicuous, the gayest, most exotic-looking bird of his 
family in England. Quitting his perch, he flew up into 
a tree close by and began singing; and for half an hour 
thereafter I continued intently listening to his brief 
strain, repeated at short intervals — a song which I 
think has never been perfectly described. "Practice 
makes perfect" is an axiom that does not apply to the 
art of song in the bird world; since the redstart, a mem- 
ber of a highly melodious family, with a good voice 
to start with, has never attained to excellence in spite 
of much practising. The song is interesting both on 
account of its exceptional inferiority and of its char- 
acter. A distinguished ornithologist has said that 
little birds have two ways of making themselves 
attractive — by melody and by bright plumage; and 

203 



Afoot in England 

that most species excel in one or the other way; and 
that the acquisition of gay colours by a species of a so- 
ber-coloured melodious family will cause it to degener- 
ate as a songster. He is speaking of the redstart. 
Unfortunately for the rule there are too many excep- 
tions. Thus confining ourselves to a single family — 
that of the finches — in our own islands, the most mod- 
est coloured have the least melody, while those that 
have the gayest plumage are the best singers — the 
goldfinch, chaffinch, siskin, and linnet. Nevertheless 
it is impossible to listen for any length of time to the 
redstart, and to many redstarts, without feeling, al- 
most with irritation, that its strain is only the prelude 
of a song — a promise never performed; that once upon 
a time in the remote past it was a sweet, copious, and 
varied singer, and that only a fragment of its melody 
now remains. The opening rapidly warbled notes are 
so charming that the attention is instantly attracted by 
them. They are composed of two sounds, both beau- 
tiful — the bright pure gushing robin-like note, and 
the more tender expressive swallow-like note. And 
that is all; the song scarcely begins before it ends, or 
collapses; for in most cases the pure sweet opening 
strain is followed by a curious little farrago of gurg- 
ling and squeaking sounds, and little fragments of 
varied notes, often so low as to be audible only at a 
few yards' distance. It is curious that these slight 
fragments of notes at the end vary in different individ- 
uals, in strength and character and in number, from a 
single faintest squeal to half a dozen or a dozen dis- 
tinct sounds. In all cases they are emitted with ap- 

204 



An Old Road Leading Nowhere 

parent effort, as if the bird strained its pipe in the 
vain attempt to continue the song. 

The statement that the redstart is a mimic is to be 
met with in many books about birds. I rather think 
that in jerking out these various little broken notes 
which end its strain, whether he only squeaks or suc- 
ceeds in producing a pure sound, he is striving to re- 
cover his own lost song rather than to imitate the songs 
of other birds. 

So much entertainment did I find' at that spot, so 
grateful did it seem in its openness after long con- 
finement in the lower thickly wooded country, that I 
practically spent the day there. At all events the 
best time for walking was gone when I quitted it, and 
then 1 could think of no better plan than to climb down 
into the old long untrodden road, or channel, again 
just to see where it would lead me. After all, I said, 
my time is my own, and to abandon the old way I 
have walked in so long without discovering the end 
would be a mistake. So I went on in it once 
more, and in about twenty minutes it came to an end 
before a group of old farm buildings in a hollow in 
the woods. The space occupied by the buildings was 
quite walled round and shut in by a dense growth of 
trees and bushes; and there was no soul there and no 
domestic animal. The place had apparently been va- 
cant many years, and the buildings were in a ruinous 
condition, with the roofs falling in. 

Now when I look back on that walk I blame myself 
for having gone on my way without trying to find out 
something of the history of that forsaken home to 

205 



Afoot in England 

which the lonely old road had led me. Those ruinous 
buildings once inhabited, so wrapped round and hidden 
away by trees, have now a strange look in memory as 
if they had a story to tell, as if something intelligent 
had looked from the vacant windows as I stood star- 
ing at them and had said. We have waited these many 
years for you to come and listen to our story and you 
are come at last. 

Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that 
greeting and message, but I failed to understand it, 
and after standing there awhile, oppressed by a sense 
of loneliness, I turned aside, and creeping and pushing 
through a mass and tangle of vegetation went on my 
way towards the coast. 

Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a 
human tragedy, came to me only because of another 
singular experience I had that day when the after- 
noon sun had grown oppressively hot — another mys- 
tery of a desolate but not in this case uninhabited 
house. The two places somehow became associated 
together in my mind. 

The place was a little farm-house standing some 
distance from the road, in a lonely spot out of sight 
of any other habitation, and I thought I would call 
and ask for a glass of milk, thinking that if things 
had a promising look on my arrival my modest glass 
of milk would perhaps expand to a sumptuous five- 
o'clock tea and my short rest to a long and pleasant 
one. 

The house I found on coming nearer was small and 
mean-looking and very old; the farm buildings in a 

206 



An Old Road Leading Nowhere 

dilapidated condition, the thatch rotten and riddled 
with holes in which many starlings and sparrows had 
their nests. Gates and fences were broken down, 
and the ground was everywhere overgrown with weeds 
and encumbered with old broken and rusty implements, 
and littered with rubbish. No person could I see 
about the place, but knew it was inhabited as there 
were some fowls walking about, and some calves shut 
in a pen in one of the numerous buildings were dole- 
fully calling — calling to be fed. Seeing a door half 
open at one end of the house I went to it and rapped 
on the warped paintless wood with my stick, and after 
about a minute a young woman came from an inner 
room and asked me what I wanted. She was not 
disturbed or surprised at my sudden appearance there: 
her face was impassive, and her eyes when they met 
mine appeared to look not at me but at something 
distant, and her words were spoken mechanically. 

I said that I was hot and thirsty and tired and 
would be glad of a glass of milk. 

Without a word she turned and left me standing 
there, and presently returned with a tumbler of milk 
which she placed on a deal table standing near me. 
To my remarks she replied in monosyllables, and stood 
impassively, her hands at her side, her eyes cast down, 
waiting for me to drink the milk and go. And when 
I had finished it and set the glass down and thanked 
her, she turned in silence and went back to that inner 
room from which she first came. And hot and tired 
as I had felt a few moments before, and desirous of an 
interval of rest in the cool shade, I was glad to be out 

207 



^Afoot in England 

in the burning sun once more, for the sight of that 
young woman had chilled my blood and made the heat 
out-of-doors seem grateful to me. 

The sight of such a face in the midst of such sur- 
roundings had produced a shock of surprise, for it was 
noble in shape, the features all fine and the mouth most 
delicately chiselled, the eyes dark and beautiful, and 
the hair of a raven blackness. But it was a colourless 
face, and even the lips were pale. Strongest of all 
was the expression, which had frozen there, and was 
like the look of one on whom some unimaginable dis- 
aster or some hateful disillusionment had come, not to 
subdue nor soften, but to change all its sweet to sour, 
and its natural warmth to icy cold. 



208 



Chapter Eighteen: Branscomhe 

Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns 
in fact, inland or on the sea, have no attractions for 
me and I was more than satisfied with a day or two of 
Sidmouth. Then one evening I heard for the first 
time of a place called Branscomhe — a village near the 
sea, over by Beer and Seaton, near the mouth of the 
Axe, and the account my old host gave me seemed so 
attractive that on the following day I set out to find 
it. Further information about the unknown village 
came to me in a very agreeable way in the course of 
my tramp. A hotter walk I never walked — no, not 
even when travelling across a flat sunburnt treeless 
plain, nearer than Devon by many degrees to the equa- 
tor. One wonders why that part of Devon which 
lies between the Exe and the Axe seems actually hotter 
than other regions which undoubtedly have a 
higher temperature. After some hours of walking 
with not a little of uphill and downhill, I began to find 
the heat well-nigh intolerable. I was on a hard dusty 
glaring road, shut in by dusty hedges on cither side. 
Not a breath of air was stirring; not a bird sang; on 
the vast sky not a cloud appeared. If the vertical 
sun had poured down water instead of light and heat on 
me my clothing could not have clung to me more un- 
comfortably. Coming at length to a group of two or 
three small cottages at the roadside, I went into one 

209 



Afoot in England 

and asked for something to quench my thirst — cider 
or milk. There was only water to be had, but it was 
good to drink, and the woman of the cottage was so 
pretty and pleasant that I was glad to rest an hour 
and talk with her In her cool kitchen. There are 
English counties where It would perhaps be said of 
such a woman that she was one in a thousand; but the 
Devonians are a comely race. In that blessed county 
the prettiest peasants are not all diligently gathered 
with the dew on them and sent away to supply 
the London flower-market. Among the best-looking 
women of the peasant class there are two distinct types 
— the rich in colour and the colourless. A majority 
are perhaps Intermediate, but the two extreme types 
may be found In any village or hamlet; and when seen 
side by side — the lily and the rose, not to say the 
peony — they offer a strange and beautiful contrast. 

This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was 
white as any pale town lady; and although she was the 
mother of several children, the face was extremely 
youthful In appearance; it seemed Indeed almost girl- 
ish in Its delicacy and innocent expression when she 
looked up at me with her blue eyes shaded by her 
white sun-bonnet. The children were five or six In 
number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her 
arms — all clean and healthy looking, with bright, fun- 
loving faces. 

I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, 
and inquired the distance. 

"Branscombe — are you going there? Oh, I wonder 
what you will think of Branscombe!" she exclaimed, 

210 



Branscombe 

her white cheeks flushing, her innocent eyes sparkling 
with excitement. 

What was Branscombe to her, I returned with in- 
difference; and what did it matter what any stranger 
thought of it? 

"But it is my home !" she answered, looking hurt 
at my careless words. "I was born there, and married 
there, and have always lived at Branscombe with my 
people until my husband got work in this place; then 
we had to leave home and come and live in this cot- 
tage." 

And as I began to show interest she went on to tell 
me that Branscombe was» oh, such a dear, queer, 
funny old place ! That she had been to other villages 
and towns — Axmouth, and Seaton, and Beer, and to 
Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to Exeter; 
but never, never had she seen a place like Branscombe 
— not one that she liked half so well. How strange 
that I had never been there — had never even heard of 
it! People that went there sometimes laughed at it at 
first, because it was such a funny, tumbledown old 
place; but they always said afterwards that there was 
no sweeter spot on the earth. 

Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when 
baby cried, in the excitement of talk she opened her 
breast and fed it before me. A pretty sight! But 
for the pure white, blue-veined skin she might have 
been taken for a woman of Spain — the most natural, 
perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth. 
But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, 
and with a blush turned aside and covered her fair 

211 



Afoot in England 

skin. Her shame, too, like her first simple uncon- 
scious action, was natural; for we live in a cooler cli- 
mate, and are accustomed to more clothing than the 
Spanish; and our closer covering "has entered the 
soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would 
have said; and that which was only becoming modesty 
in the English woman would in the Spanish seem rank 
prudishness. 

In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear 
and swift, running between the hills that rose, round 
and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, 
some grassy, others wooded. This was the Brans- 
combe, and, following it, I came to the village; then, 
for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with 
the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the 
other the widely separated groups and little rows of 
thatched cottages. 

Finally, I came to the last and largest group of all, 
the end of the village nearest to the sea, within ten 
minutes' walk of the shingly beach. Here I was 
glad to rest. Above, on the giant downs, were stony 
waste places, and heather and gorse, where the rabbits 
live, and had for neighbours the adder, linnet, and 
wheatear, and the small grey titlark that soared up and 
dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling little tune. 
On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted 
and had come to seek — the wildness and freedom of 
untilled earth; an unobstructed prospect, hills beyond 
hills of malachite, stretching away along the coast into 
infinitude, long leagues of red sea-wall and the wide 
expanse and everlasting freshness of ocean. And the 

212 



Branscombe 

village itself, the little old straggling place that had 
so grand a setting, I quickly found that the woman in 
the cottage had not succeeded in giving me a false im- 
pression of her dear home. It was just such a quaint 
unimproved, old-world, restful place as she had 
painted. It was surprising to find that there were 
many visitors, and one wondered where t|iey could all 
stow themselves. The explanation was that those 
who visited Branscombe knew it, and preferred its 
hovels to the palaces of the fashionable seaside town. 
No cottage was too mean to have its guest. I saw a 
lady push open the cracked and warped door of an old 
barn and go in, pulling the door to after her — it was 
her bed-sitting-room. I watched a party of pretty 
merry girls marching, single file, down a narrow path 
past a pig-sty, then climb up a ladder to the window of 
a loft at the back of a stone cottage and disappear 
within. It was their bedroom. The relations be- 
tween the villagers and their visitors were more in- 
timate and kind than is usual. They lived more to- 
gether, and were more free and easy in company. 
The men were mostly farm labourers, and after their 
day's work they would sit out-of-doors on the ground 
to smoke their pipes; and where the narrow crooked 
little street was narrowest — at my end of the village — 
when two men would sit opposite each other, each at 
his own door, with legs stretched out before them, 
their boots would very nearly touch in the middle of 
the road. When walking one had to step over their 
legs; or, if socially inclined, one could stand by and 
join in the conversation. When daylight faded the 

213 



Afoot in England 

village was very dark — no lamp for the visitors — and 
very silent, only the low murmur of the sea on the 
shingle was audible, and the gurgling sound of a swift 
streamlet flowing from the hill above and hurrying 
through the village to mingle with the Branscombe 
lower down in the meadows. Such a profound dark- 
ness and quiet one expects in an inland agricultural 
village; here, where there were visitors from many 
distant towns, it was novel and infinitely refreshing. 

No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and 
asleep; not one squar«e patch of yellow light was visible. 
To enjoy the sensation I went out and sat down, and 
listened alone to the liquid rippling, warbling sound 
of the swift-flowing streamlet — that sweet low music 
of running water to which the reed-warbler had 
listened thousands of years ago, striving to imitate it, 
until his running rippling song was perfect. 

A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I 
explored the coast east of the village; it was bold 
and precipitous in places, and from the summit of 
the cliff a very fine view of the coast-line on either 
hand could be obtained. Best of all, the face of the 
cliff itself was the breeding-place of some hundreds 
of herring-gulls. The eggs at the period of my visit 
were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at 
that stage both parents are almost constantly at home, 
as if in a state of anxious suspense. I had seen a 
good many colonies of this gull before at various 
breeding stations on the coast — south, west, and east 
— but never in conditions so singularly favourable as 
at this spot. From the vale where the Branscombe 

214 



Branscomhe 

pours its clear waters through rough masses of shin-gle 
into the sea the ground to the east rises steeply to a 
height of nearly five hundred feet; the cliff is thus 
not nearly so high as many another, but it has features 
of peculiar interest. Here, in some former time, there 
has been a landslip, a large portion of the cliff at its 
highest part falling below and forming a sloping mass 
a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock, 
which lies like a buttress against the vertical precipice 
and seems to lend it support. The fall must have 
occurred a very long time back, as the vegetation that 
overspreads the rude slope — hawthorn, furze, and 
ivy — has an ancient look. Here are huge masses of 
rock standing isolated, that resemble in their forms 
ruined castles, towers, and churches, some of them 
completely overgrown with ivy. On this rough slope, 
under the shelter of the cliff, with the sea at its feet, 
the villagers have formed their cultivated patches. 
The patches, wildly irregular in form, some on such 
steeply sloping ground as to suggest the idea that they 
must have been cultivated on all fours, are divided 
from each other by ridges and by masses of rock, deep 
fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn and 
furze bushes. Altogether the effect was very sin- 
gular; the huge rough mass of jumbled rock and soil, 
the ruin wrought by Nature in one of her Cromwel- 
lian moods, and, scattered irregularly about its sur- 
face, the plots or patches of cultivated smoothness — 
potato rows, green parallel lines ruled on a grey 
ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant cabbage-globes 
— each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, 

215 



Afoot in England 

crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the 
villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path 
they had made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, 
the gulls, careless of their presence, pass and repass 
wholly occupied with their own affairs. 

I spent hours of rare happiness at this spot in watch- 
ing the birds. I could not have seen and heard them 
to such advantage if their breeding-place had been 
shared with other species. Here the herring-gulls had 
the rock to themselves, and looked their best in their 
foam-white and pearl-grey plumage and yellow legs 
and beaks. While I watched them they watched me; 
not gathered in groups, but singly or in pairs, scattered 
up and down all over the face of the precipice above 
me, perched on ledges and on jutting pieces of rock. 
Standing motionless thus, beautiful in form and colour, 
they looked like sculptured figures of gulls, set up on 
the projections against the rough dark wall of rock, 
just as sculptured figures of angels and saintly men and 
women are placed in niches on a cathedral front. At 
first they appeared quite indifferent to my presence, 
^although in some instances near enough for their 
yellow irides to be visible. While unalarmed they 
were very silent, standing in that clear sunshine that 
gave their whiteness something of a crystalline appear- 
ance; or flying to and fro along the face of the cliff, 
purely for the delight of bathing in the warm lucent 
air. Gradually a change came over them. One by one 
those that were on the wing dropped on to some pro- 
jection, until they had all settled down, and, letting 
my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of 

2l6 



Brans combe 

rock, it was plain to see that all the birds were watch- 
ing me. They had made the discovery that I was a 
stranger. In my rough old travel-stained clothes and 
tweed hat I might have passed for a Branscombe vil- 
lager, but I did no hoeing and digging in one of the 
cultivated patches; and when I deliberately sat down 
on a rock to watch them, they noticed it and became 
suspicious; and as time went on and I still remained 
immovable, with my eyes fixed on them, the suspicion 
and anxiety increased and turned to fear; and those 
that were sitting on their nests got up and came close 
to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others and 
join in the loud chorus of alarm. It was a wonderful 
sound. Not like the tempest of noise that may be 
heard at the breeding-season at Lundy Island, and at 
many other stations where birds of several species mix 
their various voices — the yammeris and the yowlis, and 
skrykking, screeking, skrymming scowlis, and meickle 
moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar's wonderful ono- 
matopoetic lines. Here there was only one species, 
with a clear resonant cry, and as every bird uttered 
that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect 
was produced. The herring-gull and lesser black- 
backed gull resemble each other in language as they 
do in general appearance; both have very powerful 
and clear voices unlike the guttural black-headed and 
common gull. But the herring-gull has a shriller, 
more piercing voice, and resembles the black-backed 
species just as, in human voices, a boy's clear treble 
resembles a baritone. Both birds have a variety of 
notes; and both, when the nest is threatened with 

217 



Afoot in England 

danger, utter one powerful importunate cry, which Is 
repeated incessantly until the danger is over. And as 
the birds breed in communities, often very populous, 
and all clamour together, the effect of so many power- 
ful and unisonant voices Is very grand; but it differs 
in the two species, owing to the quality of their voices 
being different; the storm of sound produced by the 
black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of the her- 
ring-gulls has a ringing sharpness almost metallic. 

It is probable that In the case I am describing the 
effect of sharpness and resonance was heightened by 
the position of the birds, perched motionless, scattered 
about on the face of the perpendicular wall of rock, 
all with their beaks turned In my direction, raining 
their cries upon me. It was not a monotonous storm 
of cries, but rose and fell; for after two or three 
minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and 
the cries grow fewer and fewer; then the Infection 
would spread again, bird after bird joining the out- 
cry; and after a while there would be another lull, 
and so on, wave following wave of sound. I could 
have spent hours, and the hours would have seemed 
like minutes, listening to that strange chorus of ringing 
chiming cries, so novel was Its effect, and unlike that 
of any other tempest of sound produced by birds 
which I had ever heard. When by way of a parting 
caress and benediction (given and received) I dipped 
my hands in Branscombe's clear streamlet it was with 
a feeling of tender regret that was almost a pain. 
For who does not make a little inward moan, an Eve's 
Lamentation, an unworded, "Must I leave thee, Par- 

2l8 



Brans combe 

adise?" on quitting any such sweet restful spot, how- 
ever brief his stay in it may have been? But when 
I had climbed to the summit of the great down on the 
east side of the valley and looked on the wide land 
and wider sea flashed with the early sunlight I re- 
joiced full of glory at my freedom. For invariably 
when the peculiar character and charm of a place steals 
over and takes possession of me I begin to fear it, 
knowing from long experience that it will be a pain- 
ful wrench to get away and that get away sooner or 
later I must. Now I was free once more, a wanderer 
with no ties, no business to transact in any town, no 
worries to make me miserable like others, nothing to 
gain and nothing to lose. 

Pausing on the summit to consider which way I 
should go, inland, towards Axminister, or along the 
coast by Beer, Seton, Axmouth, and so on to Lyme 
Regis, I turned to have a last look and say a last 
good-bye to Branscombe and could hardly help waving 
my hand to it. 

Why, I asked myself, am I not a poet, or verse- 
maker, so as to say my farewell in numbers? My 
answer was. Because I am too much occupied in seeing. 
There is no room and time for 'tranquillity,' since I 
want to go on to see something else. As Blake has it: 
"Natural objects always did and do- weaken, deaden 
and obliterate imagination in me." 

We know however that they didn't quite quench it 
in him. 



219 



Chapter Nineteen: Abbots bury 

Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near 
the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadow- 
land where all sorts of meadow and water plants 
flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier 
beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of In- 
numerable starlings. I am always delighted to come 
on one of these places where starlings congregate, to 
watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to 
their marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial 
evolutions when they rise and break up in great bodies 
and play at clouds in the sky. When the people of the 
place, the squire and keepers and others who have 
an interest in the reeds and osiers, fall to abusing them 
on account of the damage they do, I put my fingers 
In my ears. But at Abbotsbury I did not do so, but 
listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented 
and the story they told. This was that when the 
owner o£ Abbotsbury came down for the October 
shooting and found the starlings more numerous than 
ever, he put himself into a fine passion and reproached 
his keepers and other servants for not having got rid 
of the birds as he had desired them to do. Some of 
them ventured to say that It was easier said than done, 
whereupon the great man swore that he would do it 
himself without assistance from any one, and getting 

220 



Abbotsbury 

out a big duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the 
smallest shot and went down to the reed bed and con- 
cealed himself among the bushes at a suitable distance. 
The birds were pouring in, and when it was growing 
dark and they had settled down for the night he fired 
his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and by and 
by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or 
two settled down again in the same place he fired 
again. Then he went home, and early next morning 
men and boys went into the reeds and gathered a 
bushel or so of dead starlings. But the birds returned 
in their thousands that evening, and his heart being 
still hot against them he went out a second time to 
slaughter them wholesale with his big gun. Then when 
he had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead 
and wounded fell like rain into the water below, the re- 
vulsion came and he was mad with himself for having 
done such a thing, and on his return to the house, or 
palace, he angrily told his people to "let the starlings 
alone" for the future — never to molest them again! 

I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever 
heard; there is no hardness comparable to that of 
the sportsman, yet here was one, a very monarch 
among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity 
and repented. 

Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by star- 
lings and a breeding-place of swans, is the famous 
Chesil Bank, one of the seven wonders of Britain. 
And thanks to this great bank, a screen between sea 
and land extending about fourteen miles eastward from 
Portland, this part of the coast must remain inviolate 

221 



Afoot in England 

from the speculative builder of seaside holiday resorts 
or towns of lodging-houses. 

Every one has heard of the Fleet In connection with 
the famous swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in 
the land. I had heard so much about the swannery 
that it had but little interest for me. The only thing 
about it which specially attracted my attention was 
seeing a swan rise up and after passing over my head 
as I stood on the bank fly straight out over the sea. 
I watched him until he had diminished to a small 
white spot above the horizon, and then still flying he 
faded from sight. Do these swans that fly away over 
the sea, and others which appear in small flocks or 
pairs at Poole Harbour and at other places on the 
coast, ever return to the Fleet? Probably some do, 
but, I fancy some of these explorers must settle down 
in waters far from home, to return no more. 

The village itself, looked upon from this same 
elevation, is very attractive. Life seems quieter, more 
peaceful there out of sight of the ocean's turbulence, 
out of hearing of its "accents disconsolate." The 
cottages are seen ranged in a double line along the 
narrow crooked street, like a procession of cows with 
a few laggards scattered behind the main body. One 
is impressed by its ancient character. The cottages 
are old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the 
church with its grey square tower, and all about are 
scattered the memorials of antiquity — the chantry on 
the hill, standing conspicuous alone, apart, above the 
world; the vast old abbey barn, and rough thick 

222 



Abbotsbury 

stone walls, Ivy-draped and crowned with beautiful 
valerian, and other fragments that were once parts of 
a great religious house. 

Looking back at the great round hill from the 
village it is impossible not to notice the intense red 
colour of the road that winds over its green slope. 
One sometimes sees on a hillside a ploughed field of 
red earth which at a distance might easily be taken 
for a field of blossoming trifolium. Viewed nearer 
the crimson of the clover and red of the earth are 
very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red 
of the soil and to soften that of the flower until they 
are very nearly of the same hue. The road at Abbots- 
bury was near and looked to me more intensely red 
than any ordinary red earth, and the sight was 
strangely pleasing. These two complementary col- 
ours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus — 
a little red to a good deal of green, and the more 
luminous the red and vivid the green the better they 
please us. We see this in flowers — in the red gera- 
nium, for example — where there is no brown soil be- 
low, but green of turf or herbage. I sometimes think 
the red campions and ragged-robins are our most 
beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on 
the meadow and they are like crimson flowers among 
the tall translucent grasses. I remember the joy it 
was in boyhood in early spring when the flowers were 
beginning to bloom, when in our gallops over the level 
grass pampas we came upon a patch of scarlet ver- 
benas. The first sight of the intense blooms scattered 

223 



Afoot in England 

all about the turf would make us wild with delight, 
and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go 
down among the flowers to feast on the sight. 

Green is universal, but the red earth which looks 
so pleasing amid the green is distributed very par- 
tially, and it may be the redness of the soil and the 
cliffs in Devon have given that county a more vivid 
personality, so to speak, than most others. Think of 
Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and dull-col- 
oured clays in this connection ! 

The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on 
occasions a good colourist when he finds a soil of the 
proper hue to burrow in, and the hillocks he throws 
up from numberless irregular splashes of bright red 
colour on a green sward. The wild animals that 
strike us as most beautiful, when seen against a green 
background, are those which bear the reddest fur — 
fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow a 
few miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of 
about fifty milch cows scattered over a considerable 
space of ground, some lying down, others standing 
ruminating, and still others moving about and crop- 
ping the long flowery grasses. All were of that fine 
rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon 
cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red 
animals in this country, wild and domestic, with the 
sole exception of a rare variety of the collie dog. The 
Irish setter and red chou-chou come near it. So 
beautiful did these red cows look in the meadow that 
I stood still for half an hour feasting my eyes on the 
sight. 

224 



Abbotsbury 

No less was^ the pleasure I experienced when I 
caught sight of that road winding over the hill above 
the village. On going to it I found that it had looked 
as red as rust simply because it was rust — earth made 
rich and beautiful in colour with iron, its red hue 
variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple or 
violet. I was told that there were hundreds of acres 
of this earth all round the place — earth so rich in 
iron that many a man's mouth had watered at the 
sight of it; also that every effort had been made to 
induce the owner of Abbotsbury to allow this rich mine 
to be worked. But, wonderful to relate, he had not 
been persuaded. 

A hard fragment of the red stuff, measuring a 
couple of inches across and weighing about three 
ounces avoirdupois, rust-red in colour with purple 
streaks and yellow mottlings, is now lying before me. 
The mineralogist would tell me that its commercial 
value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which is 
doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons 
of the same material lie close to the surface under 
the green turf and golden blossoming furze at the spot 
where I picked up my specimen. The lapidary would 
not look at it; nevertheless, it is the only article of 
jewellery I possess, and I value it accordingly. And 
I intend to keep this native ruby by me for as long 
as the lords of Abbotsbury continue in their present 
mind. The time may come when I shall be obliged 
to throw it away. That any millionaire should hesi- 
tate for a moment to blast and blacken any part of the 
earth's surface, howsoever green and refreshing to 

225 



Afoot in England 

the heart it may be, when by so doing he might add 
to his income, seems like a fable, or a tale of fairy- 
land. It is as if one had accidentally discovered the 
existence of a little fantastic realm, a. survival from a 
remote past, almost at one's doors; a small indepen- 
dent province, untouched by progress, asking to be 
conquered and its antediluvian constitution taken from 
it. 

From the summit of that commanding hill, over 
which the red path winds, a noble view presents itself 
of the Chesil Bank, or of about ten miles of it, run- 
ning straight as any Roman road, to end beneath the 
rugged stupendous cliffs of Portland. The ocean it- 
self, and not conquering Rome, raised this artificial- 
looking wall or rampart to stay its own proud waves. 
Formed of polished stones and pebbles, about two 
hundred yards in width, flat-topped, with steeply slop- 
ing sides, at this distance it has the appearance of a 
narrow yellow road or causeway between the open s^a 
on one hand and the waters of the Fleet, a- narrow 
lake ten m-iles long, on the other. 

When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near 
enough to be taken in a draw-net, every villager who 
owns a share (usually a tenth) in. a fishing-boat throws 
down his spade or whatever implement he happens to 
have in his hand a.t the moment, and hurries away to 
the beach to take his share in the fascinating task. At 
four o'clock one morning a youth, who had been down 
to the sea to watch, came running into the village 
uttering loud cries which were like excited yells — a 
sound to rouse the deepest sleeper. The mackerel 

226 



Abbotsbury 

had come ! For the rest of the day there was a pretty 
kind of straggling procession of those who went and 
came between the beach and the village — men in blue 
cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in 
grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets. During the 
latter part of the day the proceedings were peculiarly 
interesting to me, a looker-on with no share in any one 
of the boats, owing to the catches being composed 
chiefly of jelly-fish. Some sympathy was felt for the 
toilers who strained their muscles again and again only 
to be mocked in the end; still, a draught of jelly-fish 
was more to my taste than one of mackerel. The 
great weight of a catch of this kind when the net was 
full was almost too much for the ten or twelve men 
engaged in drawing it up; then (to the sound of deep 
curses from those of the men who were not religious) 
the net would be opened and the great crystalline hem- 
ispheres, hyaline blue and delicate salmon-pink in col- 
our, would slide back into the water. Such rare and 
exquisite colours have these great glassy flowers of 
ocean that to see them was a feast; and every time a 
net was hauled up my prayer — which I was careful 
not to repeat aloud — was, Heaven send another big 
draught of jelly-fish! 

The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and 
Bridport, turned crimson before it touched the horizon. 
The sky became luminous; the yellow Chesil Bank, 
stretching long leagues away, and the hills behind it, 
changed their colours to violet. The rough sea near 
the beach glittered like gold; the deep green water, 
flecked with foam, was mingled with fire; the one boat 

227 



Afoot in England 

that remained on it, tossing up and down near the 
beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea. 
A dozen men were drawing up the last net; but when 
they gathered round to see what they had taken — 
mackerel or jelly-fish — I cared no longer to look with 
them. That sudden, wonderful glory which had fal- 
len on the earth and sea had smitten me as well and 
changed me; and I was like some needy homeless tramp 
who has found a shilling piece, and, even while he is 
gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure be- 
fore him — glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest 
sparkling gems, more than he can gather up. 

But it is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and 
gems, though heaped waist-high all about, could pro- 
duce in the greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, 
a delight, a rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was 
of another and higher order and very rare, and was a 
sense of lightness and freedom from all trammels as 
if the body had become air, essence, energy, or soul, 
and of union with all visiijie nature, one with sea and 
land and the entire vast overarching sky. 

We read of certain saints who were subject to ex- 
periences of this kind that they were "snatched up" 
into some supramundane region, and that they stated 
on their return to earth that it was not lawful for 
them to speak of the things they had witnessed. The 
humble naturalist and nature-worshipper can only wit- 
ness the world glorified — transfigured; what he finds 
is the important thing. I fancy the mystics would 
have been nearer the mark if they had said that their 
experiences during their period of exaltation could 

228 



Abbotsbury 

not be reported, or that it would be idle to report 
them, since their questioners lived on the ground and 
would be quite incapable on account of the mind's lim- 
itations of conceiving a state above it and outside of 
its own experience. 

The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the 
earth and sea turned grey; the last boat was drawn 
up on the slope and the men departed slowly: only 
one remained, a rough-looking youth, about fifteen 
years old. Some important matter which he was re- 
volving in his mind had detained him alone on the 
darkening beach. He sat down, then stood up and 
gazed at the rolling wave after wave to roar and 
hiss on the shingle at his feet; then he moved rest- 
lessly about, crunching pebbles beneath his thick boots; 
finally, making up his mind, he took off his coat, threw 
it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the 
resolute air of a man about to engage In a fight with 
an adversary nearly as big as himself. Stepping back 
a little space, he made a rush at the sea, not to cast 
himself in it, but only, as it turned out, with the ob- 
ject of catching some water In the hollow of his hands 
from the top of an incoming wave. He only suc- 
ceeded in getting his legs wet, and in hastily retreat- 
ing he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he got up 
and renewed the assault, and when he succeeded in 
catching water in his hands he dashed it on and vig- 
orously rubbed it over his dirty face. After repeat- 
ing the operation about a dozen times, receiving mean- 
while several falls and wettings, he appeared satisfied, 
put on his coat and marched away homewards with 
a composed air. 

229 



Chapter Twenty: Salisbury 
Revisited 

Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former 
chapter, when I watched and listened to the doves in 
those cold days in early spring, I have been there a 
good many times, but never at the time when the bird 
colony is most interesting to observe, just before and 
during the early part of the breeding-season. At 
length, in the early days of June, 1908, the wished 
opportunity was mine — wished yet feared, seeing that 
it was possible some disaster had fallen upon that 
unique colony of stock-doves. It is true they appeared 
to be long established and well able to maintain their 
foothold on the building in spite of malicious perse- 
cuting daws, but there was nothing to show that they 
had been long there, seeing that it had been observed 
by no person but myself that the cathedral doves were 
stock-doves and not the domestic pigeon found on 
other large buildings. Great was my happiness to 
find them still there, as well as the daws and all the 
other feathered people who make this great building 
their home; even the kestrels were not wanting. 
There were three there one morning, quarrelling with 
the daws in the old way in the old place, halfway 
up the soaring spire. The doves were somewhat di'- 
jninished in number, but there were a good many pairs 
still, and I found no dead young ones lying about, 

230 



Salisbury Revisited 

as they were now probably grown too large to be 
ejected, but several young daws, about a dozen I 
think, fell to the ground during my stay. Undoubt- 
edly they were dragged out of their nests and thrown 
down, perhaps by daws at enmity with their parents, 
or it may be by the doves, who are not meek-spirited, 
as we have seen, or they would not be where they are, 
and may on occasion retaliate by invading their black 
enemies' nesting-holes. 

Swallows, martins, and swifts were numerous, the 
martins especially, and it was beautiful to see them 
for ever wheeling about in a loose swarm about the 
building. They reminded me of bees and flies, and 
sometimes with a strong light on them they were like 
those small polished black and silvery-white beetles 
(Gyrinus) which we see in companies on the surface 
of pools and streams, perpetually gliding and whirl- 
ing about in a sori of complicated dance. They 
looked very small at a height of a couple of hundred 
feet from the ground, and their smallness and num- 
berf and lively and eccentric motions made them very 
insect-like. 

The starlings and sparrows were in a small minority 
among the breeders, but including these there were 
seven species in all, and as far as I could make out 
numbered about three hundred and fifty birds — prob- 
ably the largest wild bird colony on any building in 
England. 

Nor could birds in all this land find a more beautiful 
building to nest on, unless I except Wells Cathedral 
solely on account of its west front, beloved of daws, 



Afoot in England 

and where their numerous black company have so 
fine an appearance. Wells has its west front; Salis- 
bury, so vast in size, is yet a marvel of beauty in its 
entirety; and seeing it as I now did every day and 
wanting nothing better, I wondered at my want of 
enthusiasm on a previous visit. Still, to me, the 
bird company, the sight of their airy gambols and 
their various voices, from the deep human-like dove 
tone to the perpetual subdued rippling, running-water 
sound of the aerial martins, must always be a prin- 
cipal element in the beautiful effect. Nor do I know 
a building where Nature has done more in enhancing 
the loveliness of man's work with her added colouring. 
The way too in which the colours are distributed is an 
example of Nature's most perfect artistry; on the 
lower, heavier buttressed parts, where the darkest 
hues should be, we find the browns and rust-reds of 
the minute aerial alga, mixed with the greys of lichen, 
these darker stainings extending upwards to a height 
of fifty or sixty feet, in places higher, then giving place 
to more delicate hues, the pale tender greens and 
greenish greys, in places tinged with yellow, the co- 
lours always appearing brightest on the smooth sur- 
face between the windows and sculptured parts. The 
effect depends a good deal on atmosphere and weather: 
on a day of flying clouds and a blue sky, with a bril- 
laint sunshine on the vast building after a shower, 
the colouring is most beautiful. It varies more than 
in the case of colour in the material itself or of pig- 
ments, because it is a "living" colour, as Crabbe rightly 
says in his lumbering verse : — 

232 



Salisbury Revisited 

The living stains, which Nature's hand alone, 
Profuse of life, pours out upon the stone. 

Greys, greens, yellows, and browns and rust-reds 
are but the colours of a variety of lowly vegetable 
forms, mostly lichens and the aerial alga called iolithus. 

Without this colouring, Its "living stains," Salis- 
bury would not have fascinated me as it did during 
this last visit. It would have left me cold though all 
the architects and artists had assured me that it was 
the most perfectly beautiful building on earth. 

I also found an increasing charm in the interior, 
and made the discovery that I could go oftener and 
spend more hours in this cathedral without a sense of 
fatigue or depression than in any other one known to 
me, because it has less of that peculiar character which 
we look for and almost invariably find in our cathe- 
drals. It has not the rich sombre majesty, the dim 
religious light and heavy vault-like atmosphere of the 
other great fanes. So airy and light Is It that It Is 
almost like being out of doors. You do not experience 
that Instantaneous change, as of a curtain being drawn 
excluding the light and air of day and of being shut 
In, which you have on entering other religious houses. 
This is due, first, to the vast size of the interior, the 
Immense length of the nave, and the unobstructed 
view one has inside owing to the removal by the "van- 
dal" Wyatt of the old ponderous stone screen — an 
act for which I bless while all others curse his memory; 
secondly, to the comparatively small amount of stained 
glass there is to intercept the light. So graceful and 
beautiful is the Interior that It can bear the light, and 



Afoot in England 

light suits it best, just as a twilight best suits Exeter 
and Winchester and other cathedrals with heavy 
sculptured roofs. One marvels at a building so vast 
in size which yet produces the effect of a palace in 
fairyland, or of a cathedral not built* with hands but 
brought into existence by a miracle. 

I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too 
long lest it should compel me to stay there always or 
cause me to feel dissatisfied and homesick when away. 

But the interior of itself would never have won 
me, as I had not expected to be won by any building 
made by man; and from the inside I would pass out 
only to find a fresh charm in that part where Nature 
had come more to man's aid. 

Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glanc- 
ing from time to time at the vast building and its var- 
ious delicate shades of colour, I asked myself why I 
kept my eyes as if on purpose away from it most of 
the time, now on the trees, then on the turf, and again 
on some one walking there — why, in fact, I allowed 
myself only an occasional glance at the object I was 
there solely to look at. I knew well enough, but had 
never put it into plain words for my own satisfaction. 

We are all pretty familiar from experience with the 
limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that 
agreeable odours please us only fitfully; the sensation 
comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly 
gone. If we attempt to keep it for some time by 
deliberately smelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, 
we begin to have a sense of failure as if we had ex- 
hausted the sense, keen as it was a moment ago. 



Salisbury Revisited 

There must be an interval of rest for the nerve be- 
fore the sensation can be renewed in its first freshness. 
Now it is the same, though in a less degree, with the 
more important sense of sight. We look long and 
steadily at a thing to know it, and the longer and more 
fixedly wc look the better, if it engages the reasoning 
faculties; but an aesthetic pleasure cannot be increased 
or retained in that way. We must look, merely glanc- 
ing as it were, and look again, and then again, with in- 
tervals, receiving the image in the brain even as we 
receive the "nimble emanation" of a flower, and the 
image is all the brighter for coming intermittently. In 
a large prospect we are not conscious of this limitation 
because of the wideness of the field and the number 
and variety of objects or points of interest in It; 
the vision roams hither and thither over it and receives 
a continuous stream or series of pleasing impressions; 
but to gaze fixedly at the most beautiful object in na- 
ture or art does but diminish the pleasure. Practically 
it ceases to be beautiful and only recovers the first effect 
after we have given the mind an interval of rest. 

Strolling about the green with this thought in my 
mind, I began to pay attention to the movements of a 
man who was manifestly there with the same object 
as myself — to look at the cathedral. I had seen him 
there for quite half an hour, and now began to be 
amused at the emphatic manner in which he displayed 
his Interest In the building. He walked up and down 
the entire length and would then back away a distance 
of a hundred yards from the walls and stare up at the 
spire, then slowly approach, still gazing up, until com- 



^Afoot in England 

ing to a stop when quite near the wall he would remain 
with his eyes still fixed aloft, the back of his head al- 
most resting on his back between his shoulders. His 
hat somehow kept on his head, but his attitude re- 
minded me of a saying of the Arabs who, to give an 
idea of the height of a great rock or other tall object, 
say that to look up at it causes your turban to fall off. 
The Americans, when they were chewers of tobacco, 
had a different expression; they said that to look up at 
so tall a thing caused the tobacco juice to run down 
your throat. 

His appearance when I approached him interested 
me too. His skin was the color of old brown leather 
and he had a big arched nose, clear light blue very 
shrewd eyes, and a big fringe or hedge of ragged white 
beard under his chin; and he was dressed in a new suit 
of rough dark brown tweeds, evidently home-made. 
When I spoke to him, saying something about the ca- 
thedral, he joyfully responded in broadest Scotch. It 
was, he said, the first English cathedral he had ever 
^ttn and he had never seen anything made by man to 
equal it in beauty. He had come, he told me, straight 
from his home and birthplace, a small village in the 
north of Scotland, shut out from the world by great 
hills where the heather grew knee-deep. He had 
never been in England before, and had come directly to 
Salisbury on a visit to a relation. 

"Well," I said, "now you have looked at it outside 
come in with me and see the interior." 

But he refused: it was enough for one day to see 
the outside of such a building: he wanted no more just 

236 



Salisbury Revisited 

then. To-morrow would be soon enough to see It In- 
side; It would be the Sabbath and he would go and 
worship there. 

"Are you an Anglican?" I asked. 

He replied that there were no Anglicans In his vil- 
lage. They had two Churches — the Church of Scot- 
land and the Free Church. 

"And what," said I, "will your minister say to your 
going to worship in a cathedral? We have all de- 
nominations here in Salisbury, and you will perhaps 
find a Presbyterian place to worship In." 

'Now it's strange your saying that!" he returned, 
with a dry little laugh. "I've just had a letter from 
him the morning and he writes on this varra subject. 
'Let me advise you,' he tells me in the letter, 'to attend 
the service in Salisbury Cathedral. Nae doot,' he 
says, 'there are many things in it you'll disapprove 
of, but not everything perhaps, and I'd like ye to go. ' " 

I was a little sorry for him next day when we had 
?.n ordination service, very long, complicated, and, I 
should imagine, exceedingly difficult to follow by a 
wild Presbyterian from the hills. He probably dis- 
approved of most of it, but I greatly admired him 
for refusing to see anything more of the cathedral than 
the outside on the first day. His method was better 
than that of an American (from Indiana, he told me) 
I met the following day at the hotel. He gave two 
hours and a half, Including attendance at the morning 
service, to the cathedral. Inside and out, then rushed 
off for an hour at Stonehenge, fourteen miles away, 
on a hired bicycle. I advised him to take another day 



Afoot in England 

— I did not want to frighten him by saying a week — 
and he replied that that would make him miss Winches- 
ter. After cycling back from Stonehenge he would 
catch a train to Winchester and get there in time to 
have some minutes in the cathedral before the doors 
closed. He was due in London next morning. He 
had already missed Durham Cathedral in the north 
through getting interested in and wasting too much 
time over some place when he was going there. 
Again, he had missed Exeter Cathedral in the south, 
and it would be a little too bad to miss Winchester 
too! 



238 



Chapter Twenty-One: Stonehenge 

That American from Indiana ! As it was market day 
at Salisbury I asked him before we parted if he had 
seen the market, also if they had market days in the 
country towns in his State? He said he had looked 
in at the market on his way back from the cathedral. 
No, they had had nothing of the kind in his State. 
Indiana was covered with a network of railroads and 
electric tram lines, and all country produce, down to 
the last new-laid egg, was collected and sent off and 
conveyed each morning to the towns, where it was 
always market day. 

How sad! thought I. Poor Indiana, that once 
had wildness and romance and memories of a vanished 
race, and has now only its pretty meaningless name ! 

"I suppose," he said, before getting on his bicycle, 
"there's nothing beside the cathedral and Stonehenge 
to see in Wiltshire?" 

"No, nothing," I returned, "and you'll think the 
time wasted in seeing Stonehenge." 

"Why?" 

"Only a few old stones to see." 

But he went, and I have no doubt did think the time 
wasted, but it would be some consolation to him, on 
the other side, to be able to say that he had seen it with 
his own eyes. 



Afoot in England 

How did these same "few old stones" strike me on 
a first visit? It was one of the greatest dlsillusion- 
ments I ever experienced. Stonehenge looked small 
— pitiably small ! For It is a fact that mere size Is 
very much to us, In spite of all the teachings of science. 
We have heard of Stonehenge in our childhood or boy- 
hood — that great building of unknown origin and an- 
tiquity, Its circles of stones, some still standing, others 
lying prostrate, like the stupendous half-shattered 
skeleton of a giant or monster whose stature reached 
to the clouds. It stands, we read or were told, on 
wSallsbury Plain. To my uninformed, childish mind a 
plain anywhere was like the plain on which I was born 
— an absolutely level area stretching away on all sides 
into Infinitude; and although the effect is of a great 
extent of earth, we know that we actually see very little 
of it, that standing on a level plain we have a very 
near horizon. On this account any large object appear- 
ing on It, such as a horse or tree or a big animal, looks 
very much bigger than It would on land with a broken 
surface. 

Oddly enough, my Impossible Stonehenge was de- 
rived from a sober description and an accompanying 
plate In a sober work — a gigantic folio in two volumes 
entitled A New System of Geography, dated some time 
in the eighteenth century. How this ponderous work 
ever came to be out on the pampas, over six thousand 
miles from the land of its origin. Is a thing to wonder 
at. I remember that the Stonehenge plate greatly 
Impressed me and that I sacrilegiously cut It out of 
the book so as to have It ! 

240 



Stonehenge 

Now we know, our reason tells us continually, that 
the mental pictures formed in childhood are false 
because the child and man have different standards, 
and furthermore the child mind exaggerates every- 
thing; nevertheless, such pictures persist until the 
scene or object so visualized is actually looked upon 
and the old image shattered. This refers to scenes 
visualized with the inner eye, but the disillusion is al- 
most as great when we return to a home left in child- 
hood or boyhood and look on it once more with the 
man's eyes. How small it is 1 How diminished the 
hills, and the trees that grew to such a vast height, 
whose tops once seemed "so close against the sky" — 
what poor little trees they now are ! And the house 
itself, how low it is; and the rooms that seemed so 
wide and lofty, where our footfalls and childish voices 
sounded as in some vast hall, how little and how mean 
they look! 

Children, they are very little, 

the poet says, and they measure things by their size; 
but it seems odd that unless we grow up amid the 
scenes where our first impressions were received they 
should remain unaltered in the adult mind. The most 
amusing instance of a false picture of something seen 
in childhood and continuing through life I have met 
was that of an Italian peasant I knew in South America. 
He liked to talk to me about the cranes, those great 
and wonderful birds he had become acquainted with 
in childhood in his home on the plains of Lombardy. 
The birds, of course, only appeared in autumn and 

241 



Afoot in Rutland 

spring when migrating, and passed over at a vast 
height above the earth. These birds, he said, were so 
big and had such great wings that if they came down 
on the flat earth they would be incapable of rising, 
hence they cnly alighted on the tops of high moun- 
tains, and as there was nothing for them to eat in such 
places, it being naked rock and ice, they were com- 
pelled to subsist on each other's droppings. Now it 
came to pass that one year during his childhood a 
crane, owing to some accident, came down to the 
ground near his home. The whole population of the 
village turned out to see so wonderful a bird, and were 
amazed at its size; it was, he said, the strangest sight 
he had ever looked on. How big was it? I asked 
him; was it as big as an ostrich? An ostrich, he said, 
was nothing to it; I might as well ask him how it 
compared with a lapwing. He could give me no 
measurements: it happened when he was a child; he 
had forgotten the exact size, but he had seen it with his 
own eyes and he could see it now in his mind — the big- 
gest bird in the world. Very well, I said, if he could 
see it plainly in his mind he could give some rough 
idea of the wing-spread — how much would it measure 
from tip to tip? He said it was perhaps fifty yards — 
perhaps a good deal more ! 

A similar trick was played by my mind about Stone- 
henge. As a child I had stood in imagination before 
it, gazing up awestruck on those stupendous stones or 
climbing and crawling like a small beetle on them. 
And what at last did I see with my physical eyes? 
Walking over the downs, miscalled a plain, anticipa- 

242 



Stonehenge 

ting something tremendous, I finally got away from 
the woods at Amesbury and spied the thing I sought 
before me far away on the slope of a green down, 
and stood still and then sat down in pure astonishment. 
Was this Stonehenge — this cluster of poor little grey 
stones, looking in the distance like a small flock of 
sheep or goats grazing on that immense down ! How 
incredibly insignificant it appeared to me, dwarfed 
by its surroundings — woods and groves and farm- 
houses, and by the vast extent of rolling down country 
visible at that point. It was only when I had recov- 
ered from the first shock, when I had got to the very 
place and stood among the stones, that I began to 
experience something of the feeling appropriate to 
the occasion. 

The feeling, however, must have been very slight, 
since it permitted me to become interested in the ap- 
pearance and actions of a few sparrows inhabiting 
the temple. The common sparrow is parasitical on 
man, consequently but rarely found at any distance 
from human habitations, and it seemed a little strange 
to find them at home at Stonehenge on the open plain. 
They were very active carrying up straws and feathers 
to the crevices on the trioliths where the massive im- 
posts rest on the upright stones. I noticed the birds 
because of their bright appearance: they were lighter 
coloured than any sparrows I have ever seen, and one 
cock bird when flying to and fro in the sunlight looked 
almost white. I formed the idea that this small col- 
ony of about a dozen birds had been long established 
at that place, and that the change in their colouring 



Afoot in England 

was a direct result of the unusual conditions in which 
they existed, where there was no shade and shelter of 
trees and bushes, and they were perpetually exposed 
for generations to the full light of the wide open sky. 

On revisiting Stonehenge after an interval of some 
years I looked for my sparrows and failed to find 
them. It was at the breeding-season, when they would 
have been there had they still existed. No doubt 
the little colony had been extirpated by a sparrow-hawk 
or by the human guardians of "The Stones," as the 
temple is called by the natives. 

It remains to tell of my latest visit to "The Stones." 
I had resolved to go once in my life with the current 
or crowd to see the sun rise on the morning of the 
longest day at that place. This custom or fashion is 
a declining one : ten or twelve years ago, as many as 
one or two thousand persons would assemble during 
the night to wait the great event, but the watchers 
have now diminished to a few hundreds, and on some 
years to a few scores. The fashion, no doubt, had its 
origin when Sir Norman Lockyer's theories, about 
Stonehenge as a Sun Temple placed so that the first 
rays of sun on the longest day of the year should fall 
on the centre of the so-called altar or sacrificial stone 
placed in the middle of the circle, began to be noised 
about the country, and accepted by every one as the 
true reading of an ancient riddle. But I gather from 
natives in the district that it is an old custom for 
people to go and watch for sunrise on the morning 
of June 21. A dozen or a score of natives, mostly 
old shepherds and labourers who lived near, would go 

244 



Stonehenge 

and sit there for a few hours and after sunrise would/ 
trudge home, but whether or not there is any tradition 
or belief associated with the custom I have not ascer- 
tained. "How long has the custom existed?" I asked 
a field labourer. "From the time of the old people 
— the Druids," he answered, and I gave it up. 

To be near the spot I went to stay at Shrewton, a 
downland village four miles from "The Stones"; or 
rather a group of five pretty little villages, almost 
touching but distinct, like five flowers or five berries 
on a single stem, each with its own old church and 
individual or parish life. It is a pretty tree-shaded 
place, full of the crooning sound of turtle-doves, hid- 
den among the wide silent open downs and watered by 
a clear swift stream, or winter bourne, which dries up 
during the heats of late summer, and flows again after 
the autumn rains, "when the springs rise" in the chalk 
hills. While here, I rambled on the downs and haunted 
"The Stones." The road from Shrewton to Ames- 
bury, a straight white band lying across a green coun- 
try, passes within a few yards of Stonehenge : on the 
right side of this narrow line the land is all private 
property, but on the left side and as far as one can see 
it mostly belongs to the War Ofl'ice and is dotted over 
with camps. I roamed about freely enough on both 
sides, sometimes spending hours at a stretch, not only 
on Government land but "within bounds," for the 
pleasure of spying on the military from a hiding-place 
in some pine grove or furze patch. I was seldom 
challenged, and the sentinels I came across were very 
mild-mannered men; they never ordered me away; 



Afoot in England 

they only said, or hinted, that the place I was in was 
not supposed to be free to the public. 

I come across many persons who lament the recent 
great change on Salisbury Plain. It is hateful to 
them; the sight of the camp and troops marching 
and drilling, of men in khaki scattered about every- 
where over a hundred square leagues of plain; the 
smoke of firing and everlasting booming of guns. It 
is a desecration; the wild ancient charm of the land 
has been destroyed in their case, and it saddens and 
angers them. I was pretty free from these uncom- 
fortable feelings. 

It is said that one of the notions the Japanese have 
about the fox — a semi-sacred animal with them — is 
that, if you chance to see one crossing your path in 
the morning, all that comes before your vision on 
that day will be illusion. As an illustration of this 
belief it is related that a Japanese who witnessed the 
eruption of Krakatoa, when the heavens were covered 
with blackness and kindled with intermitting flashes 
and the earth shaken by the detonations, and when 
all others, thinking the end of the world had come, 
were swooning with extreme' fear, veiwed it with- 
out a tremor as a very sublime but illusory spectacle. 
For on that very morning he had seen a fox cross his 
path. 

A somewhat similar effect is produced on our minds 
if we have what may be called a sense of historical 
time — a consciousness of the transitoriness of most 
things human — if we see institutions and works as 
the branches on a pine or larch, which fail and die 

246 



Stonehenge 

and fall away successively while the tree Itself lives 
for ever, and if we measure their duration not by our 
own few swift years, but by the life of nations and 
races of men. It is, I imagine, a sense capable of 
cultivation, and enables us to look upon many of man's 
doings that would otherwise vex and pain us, and, 
as some say, destroy all the pleasure of our lives, 
not exactly as an illusion, as if we were Japanese and 
had seen a fox in the morning, but at all events in 
what we call a philosophic spirit. 

What troubled me most was the consideration of 
the effect of the new conditions on the wild life of 
the plain — or of a very large portion of it. I knew 
of this before, but It was nevertheless exceedingly 
unpleasant when I came to witness it myself when I 
took to spying on the military as an amusement during 
my Idle time. Here we have tens of thousands of 
very young men, boys in mind, the best fed, healthiest, 
happiest crowd of boys In all the land, living in a pure 
bracing atmosphere, far removed from towns, and 
their amusements and temptations, all mad for pleasure 
and excitement of some kind to fill their vacant hours 
each day and their holidays. Naturally they take to 
birds'-nesting and to hunting every living thing they 
encounter during their walks on the downs. Every 
wild thing runs and flies from them, and is chased 
or stoned, the weak-winged young are captured, and 
the nests picked or kicked up out of the turf. In 
this way the creatures are being extirpated, and one 
can foresee that when hares and rabbits are no more, 
and even the small birds of the plain, larks, pipits, 

247 



Afoot in England 

wheatears, stonechats, and whincats, have vanished, 
the hunters in khaki will take to the chase of yet 
smaller creatures — crane-flies and butterflies and 
dragon-flies, and even the fantastic, elusive hover-flies 
which the hunters of little game will perhaps think 
the most entertaining fly of all. 

But it would be idle to grieve much at this small 
incidental and inevitable result of making use of the 
plain as a military camp and training-ground. The 
old god of war is not yet dead and rotting on his iron 
hills; he is on the chalk hills with us just now, walk- 
ing on the elastic turf, and one is glad to mark in his 
brown skin and sparkling eyes how thoroughly alive 
he is. 

A little after midnight on the morning of June 21, 
1908, a Shrewton cock began to crow, and that trum- 
pet sound, which I never hear without a stirring of 
the blood, on account of old associations, informed 
me that the late moon had risen or was about to rise, 
linking the midsummer evening and morning twilights, 
and I set off to Stonehenge. It was a fine still night, 
without a cloud in the pale, dusky blue sky, thinly 
sprinkled with stars, and the crescent moon coming 
up above the horizon. After the cock ceased crowing 
a tawny owl began to hoot, and the long tremulous mel- 
low sound followed me for some distance from the 
village, and then there was perfect silence, broken 
occasionally by the tinkling bells of a little com- 
pany of cyclists speeding past towards "The Stones." 
I was in no hurry: I only wished I had started sooner 

248 



Stonehenge 

to enjoy Salisbury Plain at its best time, when all 
the things which offend the lover of nature are invisible 
and non-existent. Later, when the first light began 
to appear in the east before two o'clock, it was no false 
dawn, but insensibly grew brighter and spread fur- 
ther, until touches of colour, very delicate, palest am- 
ber, then tender yellow and rose and purple, began to 
show. I felt then as we invariably feel on such oc- 
casions, when some special motive has called us forth 
in time to witness this heavenly change, as of a new 
creation — 

The miracle of diuturnity 
Whose instancy unbeds the lark, 

that all the days of my life on which I had not wit- 
nessed it were wasted days ! 

O that unbedding of the lark! The world that was 
so still before now all at once had a sound; not a 
single song and not in one place, but a sound com- 
posed of a thousand individual sounds, rising out of 
the dark earth at a distance on my right hand and up 
into the dusky sky, spreading far and wide even as the 
light was spreading on the opposite side of the 
heavens — a sound as of multitudinous twanging, gird- 
ing, and clashing instruments, mingled with shrill pierc- 
ing voices that were not like the voices of earthly 
beings. They were not human nor angelic, but pas- 
sionless, and it was as if the whole visible world, 
the dim grassy plain and the vast pale sky sprinkled 
with paling stars, moonlit and dawnlit, had found a 

249 



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voice to express the mystery and glory of the 
morning. 

It was but eight minutes past two o'clock when this 
"unbedding of the lark" began, and the heavenly rnusic 
lasted about fourteen minutes, then died down to 
silence, to recommence about half an hour later. At 
first I wondered why the sound was at a distance from 
the road on my right hand and not on my left hand 
as well. Then I remembered what I had seen on that 
side, how the "boys" at play on Sundays and in fact 
every day hunt the birds and pull their nests out, and 
I could only conclude that the lark has been pretty well 
wiped out from all that part of the plain over which 
the soldiers range. 

At Stonehenge I found a good number of watchers, 
about a couple of hundred, already assembled, but 
more were coming in continually, and a mile or so 
of the road to Amesbury visible from "The Stones" 
had at times the appearance of a ribbon of fire from 
the lamps of this continuous stream of coming cyclists. 
Altogether about five to six hundred persons gathered 
at "The Stones," mostly young men on bicycles who 
came from all the Wiltshire towns within easy distance, 
from Salisbury to Bath. I had a few good minutes at 
the ancient temple when the sight of the rude upright 
stones looking black against the moonlit and star- 
sprinkled sky produced an unexpected feeling in 
me: but the mood could not last; the crowd was 
too big and noisy, and the noises they made too sug- 
gestive of a Bank Holiday crowd at the Crystal 
Palace. 

250 



Stonehenge 

At three o'clock a ribbon of slate-grey cloud ap- 
peared above the eastern horizon, and broadened by 
degrees, and pretty soon made it evident that the sun 
would be hidden at its rising at a quarter to four. 
The crowd, however, was not down-hearted; it sang 
and shouted; and by and by, just outside the barbed- 
wire enclosure a rabbit was unearthed, and about 
three hundred young men with shrieks of excitement 
set about its capture. It was a lively scene, a general 
scrimmage, in which everyone was trying to capture an 
elusive football with ears and legs to it, which went 
darting and spinning about hither and thither among 
the multitudinous legs, until earth compassionately 
opened and swallowed poor distracted bunny up. It 
was but little better inside the enclosure, where the big 
fallen stones behind the altar-stone, in the middle, on 
which the first rays of sun would fall, were taken pos- 
session of by a crowd of young men who sat and stood 
packed together like guillemots on a rock. These too, 
cheated by that rising cloud of the spectacle they had 
come so far to see, wanted to have a little fun, and be- 
gan to be very obstreperous. By and by they found 
out an amusement very much to their taste. 

Motor-cars were now arriving every minute, bring- 
ing important-looking persons who had timed their 
journeys so as to come upon the scene a little before 
3:45, when the sun would show on the horizon; and 
whenever one of these big gentlemen appeared within 
the circle of stones, especially if he was big physically 
and grotesque-looking in his motorist get-up, he was 
greeted with a tremendous shout. In most cases he 



Afoot in England 

would start back and stand still, astonished at such 
an outburst, and then, concluding that the only way to 
save his dignity was to face the music, he would step 
hurriedly across the green space to hide himself be- 
hind the crowd. 

The most amusing case was that of a very tall 
person adorned with an exceedingly long, bright red 
beard, who had on a Glengarry cap and a great shawl 
over his overcoat. The instant this unfortunate per- 
son stepped into the arena a general wild cry of 
"Scotland for ever!" was raised, followed by such 
cheers and yells that the poor man actually staggered 
back as if he had received a blow, then seeing there 
was no other way out of it, he too rushed across the 
open space to lose himself among the others. 

All this proved very entertaining, and I was glad 
to laugh with the crowd, thinking that after all we 
were taking a very mild revenge on our hated enemies, 
the tyrants of the roads. 

The fun over, I went soberly back to my village, 
and finding it impossible to get to sleep I went to 
Sunday-morning service at Shrewton Church. It was 
strangely restful there after that noisy morning crowd 
at Stonehenge. The church is white stone with Nor- 
man pillars and old oak beams laid over the roof 
painted or distempered blue — a quiet, peaceful blue. 
There was also a good deal of pleasing blue colour in 
the glass of the east window. The service was, as I 
almost invariably find it in a village church, beautiful 
and impressive. Listening to the music of prayer 
and praise, with some natural outdoor sound to fill 

252 



Stonehenge 

up the pauses — the distant Crow of a cock or the 
song of some bird close by — a corn-bunting or wren 
or hedge-sparrow — and the bright sunlight filling the 
interior, I felt as much refreshed as if kind nature's 
sweet restorer, balmy sleep, had visited me that 
morning. The sermon was nothing to me; I scarcely 
heard it, but understood that it was about the Incar- 
nation and the perfection of the plan of salvation and 
the unreasonableness of the Higher Criticism and of 
all who doubt because they do not understand. I re- 
membered vaguely that on three successive Sundays in 
three village churches in the wilds of Wiltshire I had 
heard sermons preached on and against the Higher 
Criticism. I thought it would have been better in 
this case if the priest had chosen to preach on Stone- 
henge and had said that he devoutly wished we were 
sun-worshippers, like the Persians, as well as Christ- 
ians; also that we were Buddhists, and worshippers of 
our dead ancestors like the Chinese, and that we were 
pagans and idolaters who bow down to sticks and 
stones, if all these added cults would serve to make 
us more reverent. And I wish he could have said 
that it was as irreligious to go to Stonehenge, that 
ancient temple which man raised to the unknown god 
thousands of years ago, to indulge in noise and horse- 
play at the hour of sunrise, as it would be to go to 
Salisbury Cathedral for such a purpose. 



253 



Chapter Twenty-Two: The Village 
and ''''The Stones'' 

My experiences at "The Stones" had left me with the 
idea that but for the distracting company the hours I 
spent there would have been very sweet and precious 
in spite of the cloud in the east. Why then, I asked, 
not go back on another morning, when I would have 
the whole place to myself? If a cloud did not matter 
much it would matter still less that it was not the day 
of the year when the red disc flames on the watcher's 
sight directly over that outstanding stone and casts 
first a shadow then a ray of light on the altar. In 
the end I did not say good-bye to the village on that 
day, but settled down to listen to the tales of my 
landlady, or rather to another instalment of her life- 
story and to further chapters in the domestic history 
of those five small villages in one. I had already 
been listening to her every evening, and at odd times 
during the day, for over a week, at first with interest, 
then a little impatiently. I was impatient at being 
kept in, so to speak. Out-of-doors the world was full 
of light and heat, full of sounds of wild birds and 
fragrance of flowers and new-mown hay; there were 
also delightful children and some that were anything 
but delightful — dirty, ragged little urchins of the 
slums. For even these small rustic villages have 
their slums; and it was now the time when the young 
birds were fluttering out of their nests — their hunger- 



The Village and "The Stones'* 

cries could be heard everywhere ; and the ragged little 
barbarians were wild with excitement, chasing and 
stoning the flutterers to slay them; or when they suc- 
ceeded in capturing one without first having broken 
its wings or legs it was to put it in a dirty cage in a 
squalid cottage to see it perish miserably in a day or 
two. Perhaps I succeeded ini saving two or three 
threatened lives In the lanes and secret green 
places by the stream; perhaps I didn't; but in any 
case it was some satisfaction to have made the 
attempt. 

Now all this made me a somewhat impatient listener 
to the village tales — the old unhappy things, for 
they were mostly old and always unhappy; yet in the 
end I had to listen. It was her eyes that did it. At 
times they had an intensity In their gaze which made 
them almost uncanny, somethin«g like the luminous 
eyes of an animal hungrily fixed on Its prey. They 
held me, though not because they glittered: I could 
have gone away if I had thought proper, and remained 
to listen only because the meaning of that singular 
look in her grey-green eyes, which came into them 
whenever I grew restive, had dawned on my careless 
mind. 

She was an old woman with snow-white hair, which 
contrasted rather strangely with her hard red colour; 
but her skin was smooth, her face well shaped, with 
fine acqulllne features. No doubt it had been a very 
handsome face though never beautiful, I imagine; it 
was too strong and firm and resolute; too like the face 
of some man we see, which, though we have but a mo- 



Afoot in England 

mentary sight of it in a passing crowd, affects us like a 
sudden puff of icy-cold air — the revelation of a singular 
and powerful personality. Yet she was only a poor 
old broken-down woman in a Wiltshire village, held 
fast in her chair by a hopeless infirmity. With her 
legs paralysed she was like that prince in the Eastern 
tale on whom an evil spell had been cast, turning the 
lower half of his body into marble. But she did not, 
like the prince, shed incessant tears and lament her mis- 
erable destiny with a loud voice. She was patient and 
cheerful always, resigned to the will of Heaven, and 
— a strange thing this to record of an old woman in a 
village ! — she would never speak of her ailments. But 
though powerless in body her mind was vigorous and 
active teeming with memories of all the vicissitudes of 
her exceedingly eventful, busy life, from the time when 
she left her village as a young girl to fight her way in 
the great world to her return to end her life in it, old 
and broken, her fight over, her children and grand- 
children dead or grown up and scattered about the 
earth. 

Chance having now put me in her way, she con- 
cluded after a few preliminary or tentative talks that 
she had got hold of an ideal listener; but she feared 
to lose me — she wanted me to go on listening for 
ever. That was the reason of that painfully intense 
hungry look in her eyes; it was because she discovered 
certain signs of lassitude or impatience in me, a desire 
to get up and go away and refresh myself in the sun 
and wind. Poor old woman, she could not spring 
upon and hold me fast when I attempted to move 

256 



The Village and *'The Stones** 

off, or pluck me back with her claws; she could only 
gaze with fiercely pleading eyes and say nothing; 
and so, without being fascinated, I very often sat on 
listening still when I would gladly have been out-of- 
doors. 

She was a good fluent talker; moreover, she studied 
her listener, and finding that my interest in her own 
Interminable story was becoming exhausted she sought 
for other subjects, chiefly the strange events in the 
lives of men and women who had lived in the village 
and who had long been turned to dust. They were 
all more or less tragical in character, and it astonished 
me to think that I had stayed in a dozen or twenty, 
perhaps forty, villages in Wiltshire, and had heard 
stories equally strange and moving in pretty well 
every one of them. 

If each of these small centres possessed a scribe of 
genius, or at any rate one with a capacity for taking 
pains, who would collect and print in proper form 
these remembered events, every village would in 
time have its own little library of local history, the 
volumes labelled respectively, A Village Tragedy, The 
Fields of Dulditch, Life's Little Ironies, Children's 
Children, and various others whose titles every reader 
will be able to supply. 

The effect of a long spell of listening to these un- 
written tragedies was sometimes strong enough to 
cloud my reason, for on going directly forth into the 
bright sunshine and listening to the glad sounds which 
filled the air, it would seem that this earth was a 
paradise and that all creation rejoiced in everlasting 



Afoot in England 

happiness excepting man alone who — mysterious 
being! — was born to trouble and disaster as the 
sparks fly upwards. A pure delusion, due to our 
universal and ineradicable passion for romance and 
tragedy. Tell a man of a hundred humdrum lives 
which run their quiet contented course in this village, 
and the monotonous unmoving story, or hundred 
stories, will go in at one ear and out at the other. 
Therefore such stories are not told and not remem- 
bered. But that which stirs our pity and terror — the 
frustrate life, the glorious promise which was not ful- 
filled, the broken hearts and broken fortunes, and 
passion, crime, remorse, retribution — all this prints 
itself on the mind, and every such life is remembered 
for ever and passed on from generation to generation. 
But it would really form only one brief chapter in the 
long, long history of the village life with its thousand 
chapters. 

The truth is, if we live in fairly natural healthy 
condition, we are just as happy as the lower animals. 
Some philosopher has said that the chief pleasure in 
a man's life, as in that of a cow, consists in the pro- 
cesses of mastication, deglutition, and digestion, and I 
am very much inclined to agree with him. The 
thought of death troubles us very little — we do not 
believe in it. A familiar instance is that of the con- 
sumptive, whose doctor and friends have given him up 
and wait but to see the end, while he, deluded man, 
still sees life, an illimitable, green, sunlit prospect, 
stretching away to an Infinite distance before him. 

258 



» 



The Village and ''The Stones' 

Death is a reality only when it is very near, so close 
on us that we can actually hear its swift stoaty feet 
rustling over the dead leaves, and for a brief bitter 
space we actually know that his sharp teeth will pres- 
ently be in our throat. 

Out in the blessed sunshine I listen to a blackcap 
warbling very beautifully in a thorn bush near the 
cottage; then to the great shout of excited joy of 
the children just released from school, as they rush 
pell-mell forth and scatter about the village, and it 
strikes me that the bird in the thorn is not more 
blithe-hearted than they. An old rook — I fancy he 
is old, a many-wintered crow — is loudly caw-cawing 
from the elm tree top; he has been abroad all day 
in the fields and has seen his young able to feed them- 
selves; and his own crop full, and now he is calling 
to the others to come and sit there to enjoy the sun- 
shine with him. I doubt if he is happier than the 
human inhabitants of the village, the field labourers 
and shepherds who have been out toiling since the early 
hours, and are now busy in their own gardens and 
allotments or placidly smoking their pipes at their 
cottage doors. 

But I could not stay longer in that village of old 
unhappy memories and of quiet, happy, uninteresting 
lives that leave no memory, so after waiting two more 
days I forced myself to say good-bye to my poor 
old landlady. Or rather to say "Good night," as I 
had to start at one o'clock in the morning so as to 
have a couple of hours before sunrise at "The Stones" 



Afoot in England 

on my way to Salisbury. Her latest effort to detain 
me a day longer had been made and there was no 
more to say. 

"Do you know," she said in a low mysterious voice, 
"that it is not safe to be alone at midnight on this 
long lonely road — the loneliest place in all Salisbury 
Plain?" "The safest," I said. "Safe as the Tower 
of London — the protectors of all England are there." 
"Ah, there's where the danger is!" she returned. 
"If you -meet some desperate man, a deserter with his 
rifle in his hand perhaps, do you think he would hesi- 
tate about knocking you over to save himself and at 
the same time get a little money to help him on his 
way.-* 

I smiled at her simulated anxiety for my safety, and 
set forth when it was very dark but under a fine starry 
sky. The silence, too, was very profound: there was 
no goad-bye from crowing cock or hooting owl on 
this occasion, nor did any cyclist pass me on the road 
with a flash of light from his lamp and a tinkle from 
his bell. The long straight road on the high down was 
a dim grey band visible but a few yards before me, ly- 
ing across the intense blackness of the earth. By day 
I prefer as a rule walking on the turf, but this road had 
a rare and pecuhar charm at this time. It was now 
the season when the bird's-foot-trefoil, one of the com- 
monest plants of the downland country, was in its full- 
est bloom, so that in many places the green or grey- 
green turf as far as one could see on every side was 
sprinkled and splashed with orange-yellow. Now this 
creeping, spreading plant, like most plants that grow 

260 



The Village and ''The Stones'* 

on the close-cropped sheep-walks, whose safety lies 
in their power to root themselves and live very close 
to the surface, yet must ever strive to lift its flowers 
into the unobstructed light and air and to overtop or 
get away from its crowding neighbours. On one side 
of the road, where the turf had been cut by the spade 
in a sharp line, the plant had found a rare opportunity 
to get space and light and had thrust out such a mul- 
titude of bowering sprays, projecting them beyond the 
turf, as to form a close band or rope of orange-yellow, 
which divided the white road from the green turf, and 
at one spot extended unbroken for upwards of a mile. 
The effect was so singular and pretty that I had 
haunted this road for days for the pleasure of seeing 
that flower border made by nature. Now all colour 
was extinguished: beneath and around me there was a 
dimness which at a few yards' distance deepened to 
blackness, and above me the pale dim blue sky 
sprinkled with stars; but as I walked I had the 
image of that brilliant band of yellow colour in my 
mind. 

By and by the late moon rose, and a little later the 
east began to grow lighter and the dark down to change 
imperceptibly to dim hoary green. Then the exquisite 
colours of the dawn once more, and the larks rising 
in the dim distance — a beautiful unearthly sound — 
and so in the end I came to "The Stones," rejoicing, 
in spite of a cloud which now appeared on the eastern 
horizon to prevent the coming sun from being seen, 
that I had the place to myself. The rejoicing came 
a little too soon; a very few minutes later other visitors 

261 



Afoot in England 

on foot and on bicycles began to come in, and we all 
looked at each other a little blankly. Then a motor- 
car arrived, and two gentlemen stepped out and stared 
at us, and one suddenly burst out laughing. 

"I see nothing to laugh at!" said his companion a 
little severely. 

The other in a low voice made some apology or 
explanation which I failed to catch. It was, of course, 
not right; it was indecent to laugh on such an occa- 
sion, for we were not of the ebullient sort who go to 
"The Stones" at three o'clock in the morning "for 
a lark"; but it was very natural in the circumstances, 
and mentally I laughed myself at the absurdity of the 
situation. However, the laugher had been rebuked 
for his levity, and this incident over, there was nothing 
further to disturb me or any one in our solemn little 
gathering. 

It was a very sweet experience, and I cannot say 
that my early morning outing would have been equally 
good at any other lonely spot on Salisbury Plain or 
anywhere else with a wide starry sky above me, the 
flush of dawn in the east, and the larks rising heaven- 
ward out of the dim misty earth. Those rudely fash- 
ioned immemorial stones standing dark and large 
against the pale clear moonlit sky imparted something 
to the feeling. I sat among them alone and had 
them all to myself, as the others, fearing to tear their 
clothes on the barbed wire, had not ventured to follow 
me when I got through the fence. Outside the en- 
closure they were some distance from me, and as they 

262 



The Village and *'The Stones** 

talked in subdued tones, their voices reached me as a 
low murmur — a sound not out of harmony with the 
silent solitary spirit of the place ; and there was now no 
other sound except that of a few larks singing fitfully 
a long way off. 

Just what the element was in that morning's feel- 
ing which Stonehenge contributed I cannot say. It 
was too vague and uncertain, too closely interwoven 
with the more common feeling for nature. No doubt 
it was partly due to many untraceable associations, 
and partly to a thought, scarcely definite enough to 
be called a thought, of man's life in this land from 
the time this hoary temple was raised down to the 
beginning of history. A vast span, a period of ten 
or more, probably of twenty centuries, during which 
great things occurred and great tragedies were en- 
acted, which seem all the darker and more tremendous 
to the mind because unwritten and unknown. But 
with the mighty dead of these blank ages I could not 
commune. Doubtless they loved and hated and rose 
and fell, and there were broken hearts and broken 
lives; but as beings of flesh and blood we cannot vis- 
ualize them, and are in doubt even as to their race. 
And of their minds, or their philosophy of life, we 
know absolutely nothing. We are able, as Clifford 
has said in his Cosmic Emotion, to shake hands with 
the ancient Greeks across the great desert of centuries 
which divides our day from theirs; but there is no 
shaking hands with these ancients of Britain — or Al- 
bion, seeing that we are on the chalk. To our souls 

263 



Afoot in England 

they are as strange as the builders of Tiuhuanaco, or 
Mitla and Itzana, and the cyclopean ruins of Zim- 
babwe and the Carolines. 

It is thought by some of our modern investigators 
of psychic phenomena that apparitions result from 
the coming out of impressions left in the surround- 
ing matter, or perhaps in the ether pervading it, 
especially in moments of supreme agitation or agony. 
The apparition is but a restored picture, and pictures 
of this sort are about us in millions; but for our peace 
they are rarely visible, as the ability to see them is the 
faculty of but a few persons in certain moods and cer- 
tain circumstances. Here, then, if anywhere in Eng- 
land, we, or the persons who are endowed with this 
unpleasant gift, might look for visions of the time 
when Stonehenge was the spiritual capital, the Mecca 
of the faithful (when all were that), the meeting- 
place of all the intellect, the hoary experience, the 
power and majesty of the land. 

But no visions have been recorded. It is true that 
certain stories of alleged visions have been circulated 
during the last few years. One, very pretty and 
touching, is of a child from the London slums who saw 
things invisible to others. This was one of the chil- 
dren of the very poor, who are taken in summer and 
planted all about England in cottages to have a week 
or a fortnight of country air and sunshine. Taken 
to Stonehenge, she had a vision of a great gathering 
of people, and so real did they seem that she believed 
in the reality of it all, and so beautiful did they appear 
to her that she was reluctant to leave, and begged to 

264 



The Village and *'The Stones" 

be taken back to see it all again. Unfortunately it is 
not true, A full and careful inquiry has been made 
into the story, of which there are several versions, and 
its origin traced to a little story-telling Wiltshire boy 
who had read or heard of the white-robed priests of 
the ancient days at "The Stones," and who just to 
astonish other little boys naughtily pretended that he 
had seen it all himself! 



265 



Chapter Twenty-Three: Following 
a River , 

The stream invites us to follow: the impulse is so com- 
mon that it might be set down as an instinct; and cer- 
tainly there is no more fascinating pastime than to keep 
company with a river from its source to the sea. Un- 
fortunately this is not easy in a country where running 
waters have been enclosed, which should be as free as 
the rain and sunshine to all, and were once free, when 
England was England still, before landowners an- 
nexed them, even as they annexed or stole the com- 
mons and shut up the footpaths and made it an 
offence for a man to go aside from the road to feel 
God's grass under his feet. Well, they have also got 
the road now, and cover and blind and choke us with 
its dust and insolently hoot-hoot at us. Out of the 
way, miserable crawlers, if you don't want to be 
smashed! 

Sometimes the way is cut off by huge thorny hedges 
and fences of barbed wire — man's devilish improve- 
ment on the bramble — brought down to the water's 
edge. The river-follower must force his way through 
these obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment 
of his clothes and temper; or, should they prove im- 
passable, he must undress and go into the water. 
Worst of all is the thought that he is a trespasser. 
The pheasants crow loudly lest be should forget it. 
Occasionally, too, in these private places he encounters 
men in velveteens with guns under their arms, and 

266 



Following a River 

other men in tweeds and knickerbockers, with or with- 
out guns, and they all stare at him with amazement in 
their eyes, like disturbed cattle in a pasture; and some- 
times they challenge him. But I must say that, al- 
though I have been sharply spoken to on several oc- 
casions, always, after a few words, I have been per- 
mitted to keep on my way. And on that way I in- 
tend to keep until I have no more strength to climb 
over fences and force my way through hedges, but 
like a blind and worn-out old badger must take to my 
earth and die. 

I found the Exe easy to follow at first. Further 
on exceedingly difficult in places; but I was determined 
to keep near it, to have it behind me and before me and 
at my side, following, leading, a beautiful silvery ser- 
pent that was my friend and companion. For I was 
following not the Exe only, but a dream as well, and 
a memory. Before I knew it the Exe was a beloved 
stream. Many rivers had I seen in my wanderings, 
but never one to compare with this visionary river, 
which yet existed, and would be found and followed at 
last. My forefathers had dwelt for generations be- 
side it, listening all their lives long to its music, ajid 
when they left it they still loved it in exile, and died 
at last with its music in their ears. Nor did the con- 
nection end there; their children and children's chil- 
dren doubtless had some inherited memory of it; or 
how came I to have this feehng, which made it sacred, 
and drew me to it? We inherit not from our ances- 
tors only, but, through them, something, too, from 
the earth and place that knew them. 

267 



Afoot in England 

I sought for and found it where it takes its rise on 
open Exmoor; a simple moorland stream, not wild 
and foaming and leaping over rocks, but flowing gently 
between low peaty banks, where the little lambs leap 
over it from side to side in play. Following the stream 
down, I come at length to Exford. Here the aspect 
of the country begins to change; it is not all brown 
desolate heath; there are green flowery meadows by 
the river, and some wood. A little further down and 
the Exe will be a woodland stream; but of all the rest 
of my long walk I shall only say that to see the real 
beauty of this stream one must go to Somerset. From 
Exford to Dulverton it runs, singing aloud, foam- 
flecked, between high hills clothed to their summits 
in oak woods: after its union with the Barle it enters 
Devonshire as a majestic stream, and flows calmly 
through a rich green country; its wild romantic charm 
has been left behind. 

The uninformed traveller, whose principle it is 
never to look at a guide-book, is surprised to find that 
the small village of Exford contains no fewer than 
half a dozen inns. He asks how they are kept going; 
and the natives, astonished at his ignorance, proceed 
to enlighten him. Exford is the headquarters of the 
stag-hunt: thither the hunters flock in August, and 
spend so much money during thir brief season that 
the innkeepers grow rich and fat, and for the rest 
of the year can afford to doze peacefully behind their 
bars. Here are the kennels, and when I visited them 
they contained forty or fifty couples of stag-hounds. 
These are gigantic fox-hounds, selected for their great 

268 



Following a River 

size from packs all over the country. When out ex- 
ercising these big vari-coloured dogs make a fine show. 
It is curious to find that, although these individual 
variations are continually appearing — very large dogs 
born of dogs of medium size — others cannot be bred 
from them ; the variety cannot be fixed. 

The village is not picturesque. Its one perennial 
charm is the swift river that flows through it, making 
music on its wide sandy and pebbly floor. Hither 
and thither flit the wagtails, finding little half-uncov- 
ered stones in the current to perch upon. Both the 
pied and grey species are there; and, seeing them to- 
gether, one naturally wishes to resettle for himself 
the old question as to which is the prettiest and most 
graceful. Now this one looks best and now that; 
but the delicately coloured grey and yellow bird has 
the longest tail and can use it more prettily. Her 
tail is as much to her, both as ornament and to express 
emotions, as a fan to any flirtatious Spanish sefiora. 
One always thinks of these dainty feathered creatures 
as females. It would seem quite natural to call the 
wagtail "lady-bird," if that name had not been regis- 
tered by a diminutive podgy tortoise-shaped black and 
red beetle. 

So shallow is the wide stream in the village that a 
little girl of about seven came down from a cottage, 
and to cool her feet waded out into the middle, and 
there she stood for some minutes on a low flat stone, 
looking down on her own wavering image broken by 
a hundred hurrying wavelets and ripples. This small 
maidie, holding up her short, shabby frock with her 

269 



Afoot in England 

wee hands, her bright brown hair falling over her 
face as she bent her head down and laughed to see 
her bare little legs and their flickering reflection be- 
neath, made a pretty picture. Like the wagtails, she 
looked in harmony with her surroundings. 

So many are the villages, towns, and places of in- 
terest seen, so many the adventures met with in this 
walk, starting with the baby streamlet beyond Simons- 
bath, and following it down to Exeter and Exmouth, 
that it would take half a volume to describe them, 
however briefly. Yet at the end I found that Exford 
had left the most vivid and lasting impression, and 
was remembered with most pleasure. It was more 
to me than Winsford, that fragrant, cool, grey and 
green village, the home of immemorial peace, second 
to no English village in beauty; with its hoary church 
tower, its great trees. Its old stone, thatched cottages 
draped In ivy and vine. Its soothing sound of running 
waters. Exeter itself did not Impress me so strongly. 
In spite of Its cathedral. The village of Exford 
printed itself thus sharply on my mind because I had 
there been filled with wonder and delight at the sight 
of a face exceeding In loveliness all the faces seen In 
that West Country — a rarest human gem, which had 
the power of imparting to Its setting something of its 
own wonderful lustre. The type was a common Som- 
erset one, but with marked differences in some re- 
spects, else it could not have been so perfect. 

The type I speak of is a very distinct one : in a crowd 
in a London street you cai. easily spot a Somerset man 
who has this mark on his countenance, but it shows 

270 



Following a River 

more clearly in the woman. There are more types 
than one, but the variety is less than in other places; 
the women are more like each other, and differ more 
from those that are outside their borders than is the 
case in other English counties. A woman of this pre- 
valent type, to be met with anywhere from Bath and 
Bedminster to the wilds of Exmoor, is of a good 
height, and has a pleasant, often a pretty face; regular 
features, the nose straight, rather long, with thin nos- 
trils; eyes grey-blue; hair brown, neither dark nor 
light, in many cases with a sandy or sunburnt tint. 
Black, golden, reds, chestnuts are rarely seen. There 
is always colour in the skin, but not deep; as a rule 
it is a light tender brown with a rosy or reddish tinge. 
Altogether it is a winning face, with smiling eyes; there 
is more in it of that something we can call "refinement" 
than is seen in women of the same class in other 
counties. The expression is somewhat infantile; a 
young woman, even a middle-aged woman, will fre- 
quently remind you of a little girl of seven or eight 
summers. The innocent eyes and mobile mouth are 
singularly childlike. This peculiarity is the more 
striking when we consider the figure. This is not 
fully developed according to the accepted standards: 
the hips are too small, the chest too narrow and flat, 
the arms too thin. True or false, the idea is formed 
of a woman of a childlike, affectionate nature, but lack- 
ing in passion, one to be chosen for a sister rather than 
a wife. Something in us — instinct or tradition — will 
have it that the well-developed woman is richest in the 
purely womanly qualities — the wifely and maternal 

271 



Afoot in England 

feelings. The luxuriant types that abound most in 
Devonshire are not common here. 

It will be understood that the women described are 
those that live in cottages. Here, as elsewhere, as 
you go higher in the social scale — further from the 
soil as it were — the type becomes less and less distinct. 
Those of the "higher class," or "better class," are 
itw^ and always in a sense foreigners. 



272 



Chapter Twenty-Four: Troston 

I doubt if the name of this small Suffolk village, re- 
mote from towns and railroads, will have any literary 
associations for the reader, unless he be a person of 
exceptionally good memory, who has taken a special 
interest In the minor poets of the last century; or that 
it would help him if I add the names of Honington 
andSapIston, two other small villages a couple of miles 
from Troston, with the slow sedgy Little Ouse, or a 
branch of it, flowing between them. Yet Honington 
was the birthplace of Robert Bloomfield, known as 
"/fe^ Suffolk poet" in the early part of the last century 
(although Crabbe was living then and was great, as 
he is becoming again after many years) ; while at 
Sapiston, the rustic village on the other side of the 
old stone bridge, he acquired that love of nature and 
intimate knowledge of farm life and work which came 
out later in his Farmer's Boy. Finally, Troston, the 
little village in which I write, was the home of Capel 
Lofft, a person of importance in his day, who discov- 
ered Bloomfield, found a publisher for his poems, and 
boomed it with amazing success. 

I dare say it will only provoke a smile of amuse- 
ment in readers of literary taste when I confess that 



Afoot in Rn gland 

Bloomfield's memory is dear to me; that only because 
of this feehng for the forgotten rustic who wrote 
rhymes I am now here, stroUing about in the shade of 
the venerable trees in Troston Park — the selfsame 
trees which the somewhat fantastic Capel knew 
in his day as "Homer," "Sophocles," "Virgil," 
"Milton," and by other names, calling each old 
oak, elm, ash, and chestnut after one of the im- 
mortals. 

I can even imagine that the literary man, if he 
chanced to be a personal friend, would try to save me 
from myself by begging me not to put anything of 
this sort into print. He would warn me that it mat- 
ters nothing that Bloomfield's verse was exceedingly 
popular for a time, that twenty-five or thirty editions 
of his Farmer's Boy were issued within three years of 
its publication in 1800, that it continued to be read for 
half a century afterwards. There are other better 
tests. Is it alive to-day? What do judges of liter- 
ature say of it now? Nothing! They smile and 
that's all. The absurdity of his popularity was felt in 
his own day. Byron laughed at it; Crabbe growled 
and Charles Lamb said he had looked at the Farmer's 
Boy and it made him sick. Well, nobody wants to 
look at it now. 

Much more might be said very easily on this side; 
nevertheless, I think I shall go on with my plea for 
the small verse-maker who has long fallen out; and 
though I may be unable to make a case out, the kindly 
critic may find some circumstance to extenuate my folly 
— to say, in the end, that this appears to be one of 

274 



Troston 

the little foolishnesses which might be forgiven. 

I must confess at starting that the regard I have for 
one of his poems, the Farmer's Boy^ is not wholly a 
matter of literary taste or the critical faculty; it Is 
also, to some extent, a matter of association, and as 
the story of how this comes about is rather curious, I 
will venture to give it. 

In the distant days of my boyhood and early youth 
my chief delight was in nature, and when I opened 
a book it was to find something about nature in it, 
especially some expression of the feeling produced in 
us by nature, which was, in my case, inseparable from 
seeing and hearing, and was, to me, the most im- 
portant thing in life. For who could look on earth, 
water, sky, on living or growing or inanimate things, 
without experiencing that mysterious uplifting glad- 
ness in him ! In due time I discovered that the thing 
I sought for in printed books was to be found chiefly 
in poetry, that half a dozen lines charged with poetic 
feeling about nature often gave me more satisfaction 
than a whole volume of prose on such subjects. Un- 
fortunately this kind of literature was not obtainable 
in my early home on the then semi-wild pampas. 
There were a couple of hundred volumes on the shelves 
— theology, history, biography, philosophy, science, 
travels, essays, and some old forgotten fiction; but 
no verse was there, except Shenstone, in a small, 
shabby, coverless volume. This I read and re-read 
until I grew sick of bright Roxana tripping o'er the 
green, or of gentle Delia when a tear bedews her eye 
to think yon playful kid must die. To my uncultl- 



Afoot in England 

vated mind — for I had never been at school, and lived 
in the open air with the birds and beasts — this seemed 
intolerably artificial; for I was like a hungry person 
who has nothing but kickshaws put before him, and 
eats because he is hungry until he loathes a food which 
in its taste confounds the appetite. Never since those 
distant days have I looked at a Shenstone or even seen 
his name in print or heard it spoken, without a slight 
return of that old sensation of nausea. If Shenstone 
alone had come to me, the desire for poetry would 
doubtless have been outlived early in life; but there 
were many passages, some very long, from the poets 
in various books on the shelves, and these kept my 
appetite alive. There was Brown's Philosophy, for 
example; and Brown loved to illustrate his point with 
endless poetic quotations, the only drawback in my 
case being that they were almost exclusively drawn 
from Akenside, who was not "rural." But there 
were other books in which other poets were quoted, 
and of all these the passages which invariably pleased 
me most were the descriptions of rural sights and 
sounds. 

One day, during a visit to the city of Buenos Ayres, 
I discovered in a mean street, in the southern part of 
the town, a second-hand bookshop, kept by an old 
snuffy spectacled German in a long shabby black coat. 
I remember him well because he was a very important 
person to me. It was the first shop of the kind I had 
seen — I doubt if there was another in the town; and to 
be allowed to rummage by the hour among this mass 
of old books on the dusty shelves and heaped on the 

276 



Troston 

brick floor was a novel and delightful experience. The 
books were mostly in Spanish, French, and German, 
but there were some in English, and among them I 
came upon Thomson's Seasons. I remember the 
thrill of joy I experienced when I snatched up the small 
thin octavo in its smooth calf binding. It was the first 
book in English I ever bought, and to this day when I 
see a copy of the Seasons on a bookstall, which is 
often enough, I cannot keep my fingers off it and find 
it hard to resist the temptation to throw a couple of 
shillings away and take it home. If shillings had not 
been wanted for bread and cheese I should have had a 
roomful of copies by now. 

Few books have given me more pleasure, and as I 
still return to it from time to time I do not suppose 
I shall ever outgrow the feeling, in spite of its having 
been borne in on me, when I first conversed with read- 
ers of poetry in England, that Thomson is no longer 
read — that he is unreadable. 

After such a find I naturally went back many times 
to burrow in that delightful rubbish heap, and was 
at length rewarded by the discovery of yet another 
poem of rural England — the Farmer's Boy. I was 
prepared to like it, for although I did not know any- 
thing about the author's early life, the few passages 
I had come across in quotations in James Rennie's 
and other old natural history compilations had given 
me a strong desire to read the whole poem. I certainly 
did like it — this quiet description in verse of a green 
spot in England, my spiritual country which so far as 
I knew I was never destined to see; and that I con- 

277 



Afoot in England 

tinue to like it is, as I have said, the reason of my 
being in this place. 

While thus freely admitting that the peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the case caused me to value this poem, 
and, in fact, made it very much more to me than 
it could be to persons born in England with all its 
poetical literature to browse on, I am at the same 
time convinced that this is not the sole reason for my 
regard. 

I take it that the Farmer's Boy is poetry, not merely 
slightly poetized prose in the form of verse, although 
it is undoubtedly poetry of a very humble order. 

Mere descriptions of rural scenes do not demand 
the higher qualities of the poet — imagination and 
passion. The lower kind of inspiration is, in fact, 
often better suited to such themes and shows nature by 
the common light of day, as it were, instead of re- 
vealing it as by a succession of lightning flashes. Even 
among those who confine themselves to this lower 
plane, Bloomfield is not great: his small flame is con- 
stantly sinking and flickering out. But at intervals it 
burns up again and redeems the work from being 
wholly commonplace and trivial. He is, in fact, no 
better than many another small poet who has been de- 
voured by Time since his day, and whose work no 
person would now attempt to bring back. It is 
probable, too, that many of these lesser singers whose 
fame was brief would in their day have deeply resented 
being placed on a level with the Suffolk peasant-poet. 
In spite of all this, and of the impossibility of saving 

278 



Troston 

most of the verse which is only passably good from 
oblivion, I still think the Farmer's Boy worth preserv- 
ing for more reasons than one, but chiefly because it is 
the only work of its kind. 

There is no lack of rural poetry — the Seasons to be- 
gin with and much Thomsonian poetry besides, treat- 
ing of nature in a general way; then we have innum- 
erable detached descriptions of actual scenes, such as 
we find scattered throughout Cowper's Task, and num- 
berless other works. Besides all this there are the 
countless shorter poems, each conveying an impression 
of some particular scene or aspect of nature; the poet 
of the open air, like the landscape painter, is ever on 
the look out for picturesque "bits" and atmospheric 
effects as a subject. In Bloomfield we get something 
altogether different — a simple, consistent, and fairly 
complete account of the country people's toilsome life 
in a remote agricultural district in England — a small 
rustic village set amid green and arable fields, woods 
and common lands. We have it from the inside by 
one who had part in it, born and bred to the humble 
life he .described; and, finally, it is not given as a full 
day-to-day record — ^photographed as we may say — with 
all the minute unessential details and repetitions, but 
as it appeared when looked back upon from a distance, 
reliving it In memory, the sights and sounds and 
events which had impressed the boy's mind standing 
vividly out. Of this lowly poem it may be truly said 
that it is "emotion recollected in tranquillity," to use 
the phrase invented by Wordsworth when he attempted 

279 



Afoot in England 

a definition of poetry generally and signally failed, as 
Coleridge demonstrated. 

It will be said that the facts of Bloomfield's life — 
that he was a farmer's boy whose daily tasks were to 
scare the crows, feed the pigs, and forty things besides, 
and that later, when learning the shoemaker's trade 
in a London garret, he put these memories together 
and made them into a poem — are wholly beside the 
question when we come to judge the work as literature. 
A peasant poet may win a great reputation in his own 
day on account of the circumstances of the case, but 
in the end his work must be tried by 'the same standards 
applied In other and in all cases. 

There is no getting away from this, and all that 
remains is to endeavour to show that the poem, al- 
though poor as a whole, Is not altogether bad, but con- 
tains many lines that glow with beautiful poetic feel- 
ing, and many descriptive passages which are ad- 
mirable. Furthermore, I will venture to say that 
despite the feebleness of a large part of the work (as 
poetry) it is yet worth preserving in its entirety on 
account of its unique character. It may be that I am 
the only person in England able to appreciate it so 
fully owing to the way in which it first came to my 
notice, and the critical reader can, if he thinks proper, 
discount what I am now saying as mere personal feel- 
ing. But the case is this : when, in a distant region of 
the world, I sought for and eagerly read anything I 
could find relating to country scenes and life in England 
— the land of my desire — I was never able to get 

280 



Troston 

an extended and congruous view of It, with a sense of 
the continuity In human and animal life In Its relation 
to nature. It was all broken up into pieces or "bits" ; 
It was In detached scenes, vividly reproduced to the 
Inner eye In many cases, but unrelated and unhar- 
monlzed, like framed pictures of rural subjects hang- 
ing on the walls of a room. Even the Seasons failed 
to supply this want, since Thomson In his great work 
Is of no place and abides nowhere, but ranges on eagle's 
wings over the entire land, and, for the matter of that, 
over the whole globe. But I did get It in the Farmer's 
Boy. I visualized the whole scene, the entire har- 
monious life ; I was with him from morn till eve always 
In that same green country with the same sky, cloudy 
or serene, above me; In the rustic village, at the small 
church with a thatched roof where the daws nested 
In the belfry, and the children played and shouted 
among the gravestones In the churchyard; In woods 
and green and ploughed fields and the deep lanes — 
with him and his fellow-toilers, and the animals, 
domestic and wild, regarding their life and actions 
from day to day through all the vicissitudes of the 
5'^ear. 

The poem, then, appears to fill a place in our poetic 
literature, or to fill a gap; at all events from the point 
of view of those who, bo.rn and living In distant parts 
of the earth, still dream of the Old Home. This per- 
haps accounts for the fact, which I heard at Honlngton, 
that most of the pilgrims to Bloomfield's birthplace 
are Americans. 

281 



Afoot in England 

Bloomfield followed his great example in divid- 
ing his poem into the four seasons, and he be- 
gins, Thomson-like, with an invitation to the 
Muse : — 

O come, blest spirit, whatsoe'er thou art, 

Thou kindling warmth that hov'rest round my heart. 

But happily .he does not attempt to imitate the lofty 
diction of the Seasons or fVindsor Forest, the nable 
poem from which, I imagine, Thomson derived his 
sonorous style. He had a humble mind and knew his 
limitations, and though he adopted the artificial form 
of verse which prevailed down to his time he was 
still able to be simple and natural. 

"Spring" does not contain much of the best of his 
work, but the opening is graceful and is not without 
a touch of pathos in his apologetic description of hi-m- 
self, as Giles, the farmer's boy. 

Nature's sublimer scenes ne'er charmed my eyes 

Nor Science led me . . . 

From meaner objects far my raptures flow . . . 

Quick-springing sorrows, transient as the dew, 

Delight from trifles, trifles ever new. 

'Twas thus with Guiles; meek, fatherless, and poor, 

Labour his portion . . . 

His life was cheerful, constant servitude . . . 

Strange to the world, he wore a bashful look, 

The fields his study. Nature was his book. 

The farm is described, the farmer, his kind, hospit- 
able master; the animals, the sturdy team, the cows 
and the small flock of fore-score ewes. Ploughing, 

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sowing, and harrowing are described, and the result 
left to the powers above: — 

Yet oft with anxious heart he looks around, 

And marks the first green blade that breaks the ground; 

In fancy sees his trembling oats uprun. 

His tufted barley yellow with the sun. 

While his master dreams of what will be, Giles has 
enough to do protecting the buried grain from thiev- 
ing rooks and crows; one of the multifarious tasks being 
to collect the birds that have been shot, for although — 

Their danger well the wary plunderers know 
And place a watch on some conspicuous bough, 
Yet oft the skulking gunner by surprise 
Will scatter death among them as they rise. 

'Tis useless, he tells us, to hang these slain robbers 
about the fields, since in a little while they are no 
more regarded than the men of rags and straw with 
sham rifles in their hands. It was for him to shift 
the dead from place to place, to arrange them in dying 
attitudes with outstretched wings. Finally, there 
was the fox, the stealer of dead crows, to be guarded 
against; and again at eventide Giles m.ust trudge 
round to gather up his dead and suspend them from 
twigs out of reach of hungry night-prowlers. Called 
up at day-break each morning, he would take his way 
through deep lanes overarched with oaks to "fields re- 
mote from home" to redistribute his dead birds, then 
to fetch the cows, and here we have an example of his 
close naturalist-like observation In his account of the 
leading cow, the one who coming and going on all oc- 

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Afoot in England 

casions Is allowed precedence, who maintains her sta- 
tion, "won by many a broil," with just pride. A pic- 
ture of the cool dairy and its work succeeds, and a la- 
ment on the effect of the greed and luxury of the over- 
populous capital which drains the whole country-side of 
all produce, which makes the Suffolk dairy-wives run 
mad for cream, leaving nothing but the "three-times 
skimmed sky-blue" to make cheese for local ccmsump- 
tion. What a cheese it Is, that has the virtue of a 
post, which turns the stoutest blade, and is at last 
flung in despair Into the hog-trough, where 

It rests in perfect spite, 
Too big to swallow and too hard to bite! 

We then come to the sheep, "for Giles was shepherd 
too," and here there is more evidence of his observant 
eye when he describes the character of the animals, 
also In what follows about the young lambs, which 
forms the best passage In this part. I remember that, 
when first reading It, being then little past boyhood 
myself, how much I was struck by the vivid beautiful 
description of a crowd of young lambs challenging 
each other to a game, especially at a spot where they 
have a mound or hillock for a playground which takes 
them with a sort of goatlike joyous madness. For 
how often in those days I used to ride out to where 
the flock of one to two thousand sheep were scattered 
on the plain, to sit on my pony and watch the glad 
romps ,of the little lambs with keenest delight! I 
cannot but think that Bloomfield's fidelity to nature In 
such pictures a.s these does or shoul.d count for some- 

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thing in considering his work. He concludes: — 

Adown the slope, then up the hillock climb, 
Where every mole-hill is a bed of thyme. 
Then panting stop; yet scarcely can refrain; 
A bird, a leaf, will set them off again ; 
Or if a gale with strength unusual blow, 
Scattering the wild-briar roses into snow, 
Their little limbs increasing efforts try, 
Like a torn rose the fair assemblage fly. 

This image of the wind-scattered petals of the wild 
rose reminds him bitterly of the destined end of these 
joyous young lives — his white-fleeced little fellow- 
mortals. He sees the murdering bujtcher coming in 
his cart to demand the firstlings of the flock; he can- 
not suppress a cry of grief and indignation — he can 
only strive to shut out the shocking image from his 
soul! 

"Summer" opens with some reflections on the 
farmer's life in a prosy Crabbe-like manner; and here 
it may be noted that as a rule Bloomfield no sooner 
attempts to rise to a general view than he grows flat; 
and in like manner he usually fails when he attempts 
wide prospects and large effects. He is at his best 
only when describing scenes and incidents at the farm 
in which he himself is a chief actor, as in this part 
when, after the sowing of the turnip seed, he is sent 
out to keep the small birds from the ripening corn: — 

There thousands in a flock, for ever gay, 
Loud chirping sparrows welcome on the day, 
And from the mazes of the leafy thorn 
Drop one by one upon the bending corn. 

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Afoot in Rn gland 

Giles trudging along the borders of the field scares 
them with his brushing-pole, until, overcome by fatigue 
and heat, he takes a rest by the brakes and lying, half 
in sun and half in shade, his attention is attracted to 
the minute insect life that swarms about him: — 

The small dust-coloured beetle climbs with pain 
O'er the smooth plantain leaf, a spacious plain! 
Then higher still by countless steps conveyed, 
He gains the summit of a shivering blade, 
And flirts his filmy wings and looks around. 
Exulting in his distance from the ground. 

It is one of his little exquisite pictures. Presently his 
vision is called to the springing lark : — 

Just starting from the corn, he cheerly sings. 
And trusts with conscious pride his downy wings; 
Still louder breathes, and in the face of day 
Mounts up and calls on Giles to mark his way. 
Close to his eye his hat he instant bends 
And forms a friendly telescope that lends 
Just aid enough to dull the glaring light 
And place the wandering bird before his sight, 
That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along; 
Lost for a while yet pours a varied song; 
The eye still follows and the cloud moves by, 
Again he stretches up the clear blue sky. 
His form, his motions, undistinguished quite, 
Save when he wheels direct from shade to light. 

In the end he falls asleep, and waking refreshed picks 
up his poles and starts again brushing round. 

Harvesting scenes succeed, with a picture of Mary, 

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the village beauty, taking her share in the work, and 
how the labourers in their unwonted liveliness and 
new-found wit 

Confess the presence of a pretty face. 
She is very rustic herself in her appearance : — 

Her hat awry, divested of her gown, 

Her creaking stays of leather, stout and brown: 

Invidious barrier! why art thou so high. 

When the slight covering of her neck slips by, 

Then half revealing to the eager sight 

Her full, ripe bosom, exquisitely white? 

The leather stays have no doubt gone the way of many 
other dreadful things, even in the most rustic villages 
in the land; not so the barbarous practice of docking 
horses' tails, against which he protests in this place 
when describing the summer plague of flies and the 
excessive sufferings of the domestic animals, especially 
of the poor horses deprived of their only defence 
against such an enemy. At his own little farm there 
was yet another plague in the form of an old broken- 
winged gander, "the pest and tryant of the yard," 
whose unpleasant habit it was to go for the beasts and 
seize them by the fetlocks. The swine alone did not 
resent the attacks but welcomed them, receiving the 
assaults as caresses, and stretching themselves out and 
lying down and closing their pigs' eyes, they would 
emit grunts of satisfaction, while the triumphant bird, 
followed by the whole gabbling flock, would trample 
on the heads of their prostrate foes. 

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Afoot in England 

"Autumn" opens bravely: — 

Again the year's decline, 'midst storms and floods, 
The thund'ring chase, the yellow fading woods 
Invite my song. 

It contains two of the best things In the poem, the 
first in the opening part, describing the swine in the 
acorn season, a delightful picture which must be given 
in full:— 

No more the fields with scattered grain supply 

The restless tenants of the sty; 

From oak to oak they run with eager haste, 

And wranghng share the first dehcious taste 

Of fallen acorns; yet but thinly found 

Till a strong gale has shook them to the ground. 

It comes; and roaring woods obedient wave: 

Their home well pleased the joint adventurers leave; 

The trudging sow leads forth her numerous young, 

Playful, and white, and clean, the briars among, 

Till briars and thorns increasing fence them round. 

Where last year's mould'ring leaves bestrew the ground, 

And o'er their heads, loud lashed by furious squalls, 

Bright from their cups the rattling treasure falls; 

Hot thirsty food ; whence doubly sweet and cool 

The welcome margin of some rush-grown pool, 

The wild duck's lonely haunt, whose jealous eye 

Guards every point; who sits prepared to fly, 

On the calm bosom of her little lake, 

Too closely screened for ruffian winds to shake; 

And as the bold intruders press around. 

At once she starts and rises with a bound ; 

With bristles raised the sudden noise they hear, 

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Troston 

And ludicrously wild and winged with fear, 

The herd decamp with more than swinish speed, 

And snorting dash through sedge and rush and reed; 

Through tangled thickets headlong on they go, 

Then stop and listen for their fancied foe; 

The hindmost still the growing panic spreads, 

Repeated fright the first alarm succeeds, 

Till Folly's wages, wounds and thorns, they reap; 

Yet glorying in their fortunate escape, 

Their groundless terrors by degrees soon cease. 

And Night's dark reign restores their peace. 

For now the gale subsides, and from each bough 

The roosting pheasant's short but frequent crow 

Invites to rest, and huddling side by side 

The herd in closest ambush seek to hide; 

Seek some warm slope with shagged moss o'erspread, 

Dried leaves their copious covering and their bed. 

In vain may Giles, through gathering glooms that fall, 

And solemn silence, urge his piercing call; 

Whole days and nights they tarry 'midst their store, 

Nor quit the woods till oaks can yield no more. 

It is a delightful passage to one that knows a pig — 
the animal we respect for its intelligence, holding it 
in this respect higher, more human, than the horse, 
and at the same time laugh at on account of certain 
ludicrous points about It, as for example its liability 
to lose its head. Thousands of years of com- 
fortable domestic life have failed to rid it of this in- 
convenient heritage from the time when wild in woods 
It ran. Yet In this particular Instance the terror of the 
swine does not seem wholly Inexcusable, If we know 
a wild duck as well as a pig, especially the duck that 

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Afoot in England 

takes to haunting a solitary woodland pool, who, when 
intruded on, springs up with such a sudden tremen- 
dous splash and flutter of wings and outrageous 
screams, that man himself, if not prepared for it, may 
be thrown off his balance. 

Passing over other scenes, about one hundred and 
fifty lines, we come to the second notable passage, 
when after the sowing of the winter wheat, poor 
Giles once more takes up his old occupation of rook- 
scaring. It is now as in spring and summer — 

Keen blows the blast and ceaseless rain descends ; 
The half-stripped hedge a sorry shelter lends, 

and he thinks it would be nice to have a hovel, no 
matter how small, to take refuge in, and at once sets 
about its construction. 

In some sequestered nook, embanked around, 

Sods for its walls and straw in burdens bound ; 

Dried fuel hoarded is his richest store, 

And circling smoke obscures his little door ; 

Whence creeping forth to duty's call he yields, 

And strolls the -Crusoe of the lonely fields. 

On whitehorn tow'ring, and the leafless rose, 

A frost-nipped feast in bright vermilion glows; 

Where clust'ring sloes in glossy order rise, 

He crops the loaded branch, a cumbrous prize; 

And on the flame the splutt'ring fruit he rests, 

Placing green sods to s.eat the coming guests; 

His guests by promise; playmates young and gay; — 

But ah! fresh pastures lure their steps away! 

He sweeps his hearth, and homeward looks in vain, 

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Troston 

Till feeling Disappointment's cruel pain 

His fairy revels are exchanged for rage, 

His banquet marred, grown dull his hermitage, 

The field becomes his prison, till on high 

Benighted birds to shades and coverts fly. 

"The field becomes his prison," and the thought of 
this trival restraint, which is yet felt so poignantly, 
brings to .mind an infinitely greater one. Look, he 
says — 

From the poor bird-boy with his roaste;d sloes 

to the miserable state of those who are confined in 
dungeons, deprived of daylight and the sight of the 
green earth, whose minds perpetually travel back to 
happy scenes. 

Trace and retrace the beaten worn-out way, 

whose chief bitterness it is to be forgotten and see 
no familiar friendly face. 

"Winter" is, I think, the best of the four parts: 
it gives the idea that the poem was written as it 
stands, from "Spring" onwards, that by the time he 
got to the last part the writer had acquired a greater 
ease and assurance. At all events it Is less patchy 
and more equal. It is also more sober In tone, as 
befits the subject, and opens with an account of the 
domestic animals on the farm, their Increased depend- 
ence on man and the compassionate feelings they evoke 
In us. He Is, we feel, dealing with realities, always 
from the point of view of a boy of sensitive mind 

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Afoot in England 

and tender heart — of one taken in boyhood from 
this life before it had wrought any change in him. 
For in due time the farm boy, however fine his spirit 
may be, must harden and grow patient and stolid in 
heat and cold and wet, like the horse that draws the 
plough or cart; and as he hardens he grows callous. 
In his wretched London garret if any change came to 
him it was only to an increased love and pity for the 
beasts he had lived among, who looked and cried to 
him to be fed. He describes it well, the frost and 
bitter cold, the hungry cattle following the cart to 
the fields, the load of turnips thrown out on the hard 
frozen ground; but the turnips too are frozen hard 
and they cannot eat them until Giles, following with 
his beetle, splits them up with vigorous blows, and 
the cows gather close round him, sending out a cloud 
of steam from their nostrils. 

The dim short winter day soon ends, but the sound 
of the flails continues in the barns till long after dark 
before the weary labourers end their task and trudge 
home. Giles, too, is busy at this time taking hay to 
the housed cattle, many a sweet mouthful being 
snatched from the load as he staggers beneath it on 
his way to the racks. Then follow the well-earned 
hours of "warmth and rest" by the fire in the big 
old kitchen which he describes: — 

For the rude architect, unknown to fame, 
(Nor symmetry nor elegance his aim), 
Who spread his floors of solid oak on high, 
On beams rough-hewn from age to age that lie, 
Bade his wide fabric unimpaired sustain 

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Troston 

The orchard's store, and cheese, and golden grain; 
Bade from its central base, capacious laid, 
The well-wrought chimney rear its lofty head 
Where since hath many a savoury ham been stored, 
And tempests howled and Christmas gambols roared. 

The tired ploughman, steeped in luxurious heat, 
by and by falls asleep and dreams sweetly until his 
chilblains or the snapping fire awakes him, and he 
pulls himself up and goes forth yawning to give his 
team their last feed, his lantern throwing a feeble 
gleam on the snow as he makes his way to the stable. 
Having completed his task, he pats the sides of those 
he loves best by way of good-night, and leaves them 
to their fragrant meal. And this kindly action on his 
part suggests one of the best passages of the poem. 
Even old well-fed Dobbin occasionally rebels against 
his slavery, and released from his chains will lift his 
clumsy hoofs and kick, "disdainful of the dirty wheel." 
Short-sighted Dobbin! 

Thy chains were freedom, and thy toils repose. 
Could the poor post-horse tell thee all his woes; 
Show thee his bleeding shoulders, and unfold 
The dreadful anguish he endures for gold; 
Hired at each call of business, lust, or rage. 
That prompts the traveller on from stage to stage. 
Still on his strength depends their boasted speed ; 
For them his limbs grow weak, his bare ribs bleed; 
And though he groaning quickens at command, 
Their extra shilling in the rider's hand 
Becomes his bitter scourge. . . . 

The description, too long to quote, which follows of 



Afoot in England 

the tortures inflicted on the post-horse a century ago, 
is almost incredible to us, and we flatter ourselves 
that such things would not be tolerated now. But 
we must get over the ground somehow, and I take it 
that but for the invention of other more rapid means 
of transit the present generation would be as little 
concerned at the pains of the post-horse as they are at 
the horrors enacted behind the closed doors of the 
physiological laboratories, the atrocity of the steel 
trap, the continual murdering by our big game hunters 
of all the noblest animals left on the globe, and finally 
the annual massacre of millions of beautiful birds in 
their breeding time to provide ornaments for the hats 
of our women. 

"Come forth he must," s.ays Bloomfield, when he 
describes how the flogged horse at length gains the 
end of the stage and, "trembling under complicated 
pains," when "every nerve a separate anguish knows," 
he is finally unharnessed and led to the stable door, 
but has scarcely tasted food and rest before he is 
called for again. 

Though limping, maimed and sore; 
He hears the whip ; the chaise is at the door . . . 
The collar tightens and again he feels 
His half-healed wounds inflamed ; again the wheels 
With tiresome sameness in his ears resound 
O'er blinding dust or miles of flinty ground. 

This is over and done with simply because the post- 
horse is no longer wanted, and we have to remember 
that no form of cruelty inflicted, whether for sport 

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Troston 

or profit or from some other motive, on the lower 
animals has ever died out of itself in the land. Its 
end has invariably been brought about by legislation 
through the devotion of men who were the "cranks," 
the "faddists," the "sentimentalists," of their day, who 
were jeered and laughed at by their fellows, and who 
only succeeded by sheer tenacity and force of charac- 
ter after long fighting against public opinion and a 
reluctant Parliament, in finally getting their law. 

Bloomfield's was but a small voice crying in the 
wilderness, and he was Indeed a small singer in the 
day of our greatest singers. As a poet he was not 
worthy to unloose the buckles of their shoes; but he 
had one thing In common with the best and greatest, 
the feeling of tender love and compassion for the 
lower animals which was in Thomson and Cowper, 
but found it.s highest expression in his own great con- 
temporaries, Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth. 
In virtue of this feeling he was of their illustrious 
brotherhood. 

In conclusion, I will quote one more passage. 
From the subject of hotrses he passes to that of dogs 
and their occasional reversion to wildness, when the 
mastiff or cur, the "faithful" house-dog by day, takes 
to sheep-killing by night. As a rule he is exceedingly 
cunning, committing his depredations at a distance 
from home, and after getting his fill of slaughter he 
sneaks home in the early hours to spend the day in his 
kennel "licking his guilty paws." This is an anxious 
time for shepherds and farmers, and poor Giles is 
compelled to pay late evening visits to his small flock 



Afoot in England 

of heavy-sided ewes penned in their distant fold. It 
is a comfort to him to have a full moon on these lonely 
expeditions, and despite his tremors he is able to ap- 
preciate the beauty of the scene. 

With saunt'ring steps he climbs the distant stile, 
Whilst all around him wears a placid smile; 
There views the white-robed clouds in clusters driven 
And all the glorious pageantry of heaven. 
Low on the utmost bound'ry of the sight 
The rising vapours catch the silver light; 
Thence fancy measures as they parting fly 
Which first will throw its shadow on the eye, 
Passing the source of light ; and thence away 
Succeeded quick by brighter still than they. 
For yet above the wafted clouds are seen 
(In a remoter sky still more serene) 
Others detached in ranges through the air, 
Spotless as snow and countless as they're fair; 
Scattered immensely wide from east to west 
The beauteous semblance of a flock at rest. 

This is almost the only passage in the poem in which 
something of the vastness of visible nature is con- 
veyed. He saw the vastness only in the sky on nights 
with a full moon or when he made a telescope of his 
hat to watch the flight of the lark. It was not a hilly 
country about his native place, and his horizon was 
a very limited one, usually bounded by the hedgerow 
timber at the end of the level field. The things he 
depicts were seen at short range, an,d the poetry, we 
see, was of a very modest kind. It was a "humble 
note" which pleased me in the days of long ago when 

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Troston 
I was young and very ignorant, and as it pleases me 
still it may be supposed that mentally I have not pro- 
gressed with the years. Nevertheless, I am not in- 
capable of appreciating the greater music; all that is 
said in its praise, even to the extremest expressions 
of admiration of those who are moved to a sense of 
wonder by it, find an echo in me. But it is not only 
a delight to me to listen to the lark singing at heaven's 
gate and to the vesper nightingale in the oak copse — 
the singer of a golden throat and wondrous artistry; 
I also love the smaller vocalists — the modest shuffle- 
wing and the lesser whitethroat and the yellow-ham- 
mer with his simple chant. These are very dear to 
me: their strains do not strike me as trivial; they 
have a lesser distinction of their own and I would not 
miss them from the choir. The literary man will 
smile at this and say that my paper is naught but an 
idle exercise, but I fancy I shall "leep the better to- 
night for having discharged this ancient debt which 
has been long on my conscience. 



297 



Chapter Twenty-Five: My Friend 
Jack 

My friend Jack is a retriever^ — very black, very curly, 
perfect in shape, but just a retriever; and he is really 
not my friend, only he thinks he is, which comes to 
the same thing. So convinced is he that I am his 
guide, protector, and true master, that if I were to 
give him a downright scolding or even a thrashing he 
would think it was all right and go on just the same. 
His way of going on is to make a companion of me 
whether I want him or not. I do not want him, but 
his idea is that I want him very much. I bitterly 
blame myself for having made the first advances, al- 
though nothing came of it except that he growled. I 
met him in a Cornish village in a house where I stayed. 
There was a nice kennel there, painted green, with a 
bed of clean straw and an empty plate which had con- 
tained his dinner, but on peeping in I saw no dog. 
Next day it was the same, and the next, and the day 
after that; then I inquired about it — Was there a dog 
in that house or not? Oh, yes, certainly there was: 
Jack, but a very independent sort of dog. On most 
days he looked in, ate his dinner and had a nap on his 
straw, but he was not what you would call a home- 
keeping dog. 

One day I found him in, and after we had looked 
for about a minute at each other, I squatting before 

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My Friend Jack 

the kennel, he with chin on paws pretending to be 
looking through me at something beyond, I addressed 
a few kind words to him, which he received with the 
before-mentioned growl. I pronounced him a surly 
brute and went away. It was growl for growl. 
Nevertheless I was well pleased at having escaped the 
consequences in speaking kindly to him. I am not a 
"doggy" person nor even a canophilist. The purely 
parasitic or degenerate pet dog moves me to compas- 
sion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear and 
avoid because we are not in harmony; consequently I 
suffer and am a loser when he forces his company on 
me. The outdoor world I live in is not the one to 
which a man goes for a constitutional, with a dog to 
save him from feeling lonely, or, if he has a gun, with 
a dog to help him kill something. It is a world which 
has sound in it, distant cries and penetrative calls, and 
low mysterious notes, as of insects and corncrakes, and 
frogs chirping and of grasshopper warblers — sounds 
like wind in the dry sedges. And there are also sweet 
and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world where 
creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished 
scales, on softly padded feet — rabbits, foxes, stoats, 
weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders 
and slow-worms, also beetles and dragon-flies. Many 
are at enmity with each other, but on account of their 
quietude there is no disturbance, no outcry and rush- 
ing into hiding. And having acquired this habit from 
them I am able to see and be with them. The sitting 
bird, the frolicking rabbit, the basking adder — they 

299 



Afoot in England 

are as little disturbed at my presence as the butterfly 
that drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on 
a leaf or frond and makes me hold my breath at 'the 
sight of his divine colour, as if he had just fluttered 
down from some brighter realm in the sky. Think 
of a dog in this world, intoxicated with the odours 
of so many wild creatures, dashing and splashing 
through bogs and bushes ! It is ten times worse than 
a bull in a china-shop. The bull can but smash a lot 
of objects made of baked clay; the dog introduces a 
mad panic in a world of living intelligent beings, a 
fairy realm of exquisite beauty. They scuttle away 
and vanish into hiding as if a deadly wind had blown 
over the earth and swept them out of existence. 
Only the birds remain — they can fly and do not fear for 
their own lives, but are in a state of intense anxiety 
about their eggs and young among the bushes which 
he is dashing through or exploring. 

I had good reason, then, to congratulate myself on 
Jack's surly behaviour on our first meeting. Then, 
a few days later, a curious thing happened. Jack was 
discovered one morning in his kennel, and when spoken 
to came or rather dragged himself out, a most pitiable 
object. He was horribly bruised and sore all over; 
his bones appeared to be all broken; he was limp and 
could hardly get on his feet, and in that miserable con- 
dition he continued for some three days. 

At first we thought he had been in a big fight — he 
was inclined that way, his master said — but we could 
discover no tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but 

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My Friend Jack 

bruises. Perhaps, we said, he had fallen into the 
hands of some cruel person in one of the distant moor- 
land farms, who had tied him up, then thrashed him 
with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to die on 
the moor or crawl home if he could. His master 
looked so black at this that we said no more about it. 
But Jack was a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I 
think, and after three days of lying there like a dead 
dog he quickly recovered, though I'm quite sure that if 
his injuries had been distributed among any half-dozen 
pampered or pet dogs it would have killed them all. 
A morning came when the kennel was empty: Jack 
was not dead — he was well again, and, as usual, out. 
Just then I was absent for a week or ten days then, 
back again, I went out one fine morning for a long 
day's ramble along the coast. A mile or so from 
home, happening to glance back I caught sight of a 
black dog's face among the bushes thirty or forty yards 
away gazing earnestly at me. It was Jack, of course, 
nothing but his head visible in an opening among the 
bushes — a black head which looked as if carved in 
ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze 
blossoms. The beauty and singularity of the sight 
made it impossible for me to be angry with him, though 
there's nothing a man more resents than being shad- 
owed, or secretly followed and spied upon, even by a 
dog, so, without considering what I was letting myself 
in for, I cried out "Jack" and instantly he bounded out 
and came to my side, then flew on ahead, well pleased 
to lead the way. 



Afoot in England 

"I must suffer him this time," I said resignedly, and 
went on, he always ahead acting as my scout and hun- 
ter — self-appointed, of course, but as I had not ordered 
him back in trumpet tones' and hurled a rock at him to 
enforce the command, he took it that he was appointed 
by me. He certainly made the most of his position; 
no one could say that he was lacking in zeal. He 
scoured the country to the right and left and far in ad- 
vance of me, crashing through furze thickets and 
splashing across bogs and streams, spreading terror 
where he went and leaving nothing for me to look at. 
So it went on until after one o'clock when, tired and 
hungry, I was glad to go down into a small fishing cove 
to get some dinner in a cottage I knew. Jack threw 
himself down on the floor and shared my meal, then 
made friends with the fisherman's wife and got a second 
meal of saffron cake which, being a Cornish dog, he 
thoroughly enjoyed. 

The second half of the day was very much like the 
first, altogether a blank day for me, although a very 
full one for Jack, who had filled a vast number of wild 
creatures with terror, furiously hunted a hundred or 
more, and succeeded in killing two or three. 

Jack was impossible, and would never be allowed 
to follow me again. So I sternly said and so thought, 
but when the time came and I found him waiting for me 
his brown eyes bright with joyful anticipation, I could 
not scowl at him and thunder out No ! I could not 
help putting myself in his place. For here he was, a 
dog of boundless energy who must exercise his powers 

302 



My Friend Jack 

or be miserable, with nothing in the village for him 
except to witness the not very exciting activities of 
others; and that, I dscovered, had been his hfe. He 
was mad to do something, and because there was no- 
thing for him to do his time was mostly spent in going 
about the village to keep an eye on the movements of 
the people, especially of those who did the work, always 
with the hope that his services might be required in 
some way by some one. He was grateful for the 
smallest crumbs, so to speak. House-work and work 
about the house — milking, feeding the pigs and so on 
— did not interest him, nor would he attend the la- 
bourers in the fields. Harvest time would make a dif- 
ference; now it was ploughing, sowing, and hoeing, 
with nothing for Jack. But he was always down at 
the fishing cove to see the boats go out or come in and 
join in the excitement when there was a good catch. 
It was still better when the boat went with provisions 
to the lighthouse, or to relieve the keeper, for then 
Jack would go too and if they would not have him he 
would plunge into the waves and swim after it until 
the sails were hoisted and it flew like a great gull from 
him and he was compelled to swim back to land. If 
there was nothing else to do he would go to the stone 
quarry and keep the quarrymen company, sharing their 
dinner and hunting away the cows and donkeys that 
came too near. Then at six o'clock he would turn up 
at the cricket-field, where a few young enthusiasts 
would always attend to practise after working hours. 
Living this way Jack was, of course, known to every- 



Afoot in England 

body — as well known as the burly parson, the tall 
policeman, and the lazy girl who acted as postman and 
strolled about the parish once a day delivering the 
letters. When Jack trotted down the village street he 
received as many greetings as any human inhabitant — 
"Hullo, Jack!" or "Morning, Jack," or "Where be 
going, Jack?" 

But all this variety, and all he could do to fit himself 
into and be a part of the village life and fill up his 
time, did not satisfy him. Happiness for Jack was 
out on the moor — its lonely wet thorny places, preg- 
nant with fascinating scents, not of flowers and 
odorous herbs, but of alert, warm-blooded, and swift- 
footed creatures. And I was going there — would I, 
could I, be so heartless as to refuse to take him? 

You see that Jack, being a dog, could not go there 
alone. He was a social being by instinct as well as 
training, dependent on others, or on the one who was 
his head and master. His human master, or the man 
who took him out and spoke to him in a tone of author- 
ity, represented the head of the pack — the leading dog 
for the time being, albeit a dog that walked on his hind 
legs and spoke a bow-wow dialect of his own. 

I thought of all this and of many things besides. 
The dog, I remembered, was taken by man out of his 
own world and thrust into one where he can never 
adapt himself perfectly to the conditions, and it was 
consequently nothing more than simple justice on my 
part to do what I could to satisfy his desire even at 
some cost to myself. But while I was revolving the 

304 



My Friend Jack 

matter In my mind, feeling rather unhappy about It, 
Jack was quite happy, since he had nothing to revolve. 
For him It was all settled and done with. Having 
taken him out once, I must go on taking him out al- 
ways. Our two lives, hitherto running apart — his in 
the village, where he occupied himself with unconge- 
nial affairs, mine on the moor where, having but two 
legs to run on, I could catch no rabbits — were now 
united In one current to our mutual advantage. 
His habits were altered to suit the new life. He 
stayed in now so as not to lose me when I went for 
a walk, and when returning, instead of going back to 
his kennel, he followed me in and threw himself down, 
all wet, on the rug before the fire. His master and 
mistress came in and stared In astonishment. It was 
against the rules of the house ! They ordered him 
out and he looked at them without moving. Then 
they spoke again very sharply Indeed, and he growled 
a low buzzing growl without lifting his chin from his 
paws, and they had to leave him! He had trans- 
ferred his allegiance to a new master and head of the 
pack. He was under my protection and felt quite 
safe: if I had taken any part In that scene It would 
have been to order those two persons who had once 
lorded It over him out of the room! 

I didn't really mind his throwing over his master 
and taking possession of the rug in my sitting-room, 
but I certainly did very keenly resent his behaviour 
towards the birds every morning at breakfast-time. 
It was my chief pleasure to feed them during the bad 
weather, and it was often a difficult task even before 



Afoot in England 

Jack came on the scene to mix himself in my affairs. 
The Land's End is, I believe, the windiest place in 
the world, and when I opened the window and threw 
the scraps out the wind would catch and whirl them 
away like so many feathers over the garden wall, and 
I could not see what became of them. It was neces- 
sary to go out by the kitchen door at the back (the 
front door facing the sea being impossible) and scatter 
the food on the lawn, and then go into watch the 
result from behind the window. The blackbirds and 
thrushes would wait for a lull to fly in over the wall, 
while the daws would hover overhead and sometimes 
succeed in dropping down and seizing a crust, but 
often enough when descending they would be caught 
and whirled away by the blast. The poor magpies 
found their long tails very much against them in the 
scramble, and it was even worse with the pied wag- 
tail. He would go straight for the bread and get 
whirled and tossed about the smooth lawn like a toy 
bird made of feathers, his tail blown over his head. 
It was bad enough, and then Jack, curious about these 
visits to the lawn, came to investigate and finding the 
scraps, proceeded to eat them all up. I tried to make 
him understand better by feeding him before I fed the 
birds; then by scolding and even hitting him, but he 
would not see it; he knew better than I did; he wasn't 
hungry and he didn't want bread, but he would eat 
it all the same, every scrap of it, just to prevent it 
from being wasted. Jack was doubtless both vexed 
and amused at my simplicity in thinking that all this 

306 



My Friend Jack 

food which I put on the lawn would remain there un- 
devoured by those useless creatures the birds until 
it was wanted. 

Even this I forgave him, for I saw that he had 
not, that with his dog mind he could not, understand 
me. I also remembered the words of a wise old Cor- 
nish writer with regard to the mind of the lower 
animals: "But their faculties of mind are no less pro- 
portioned to their state of subjection than the shape 
and properties of their bodies. They have knov/ledge 
peculiar to their several spheres and sufficient for the 
under-part they have to act." 

Let me be free from the delusion that it is possible 
to raise them above this level, or in other words to 
add an inch to their mental stature. I have nothing 
to forgive Jack after all. And so in spite of every- 
thing Jack was suffered at home and accompanied me 
again and again in my walks abroad; and there were 
more blank days, or if not altogether blank, seeing that 
there was Jack himself to be observed and thought 
about, they were not the kind of days I had counted on 
having. My only consolation was that Jack failed to 
capture more than one out of every hundred, or per- 
haps five hundred, of the creatures he hunted, and that 
I was even able to save a few of these. But I could 
not help admiring his tremendous energy and courage, 
especially in cliff-climbing when we visited the head- 
lands — those stupendous masses and lofty piles of 
granite which rise like castles built by giants of old. 
He would almost make me tremble for his life when, 



Afoot in England 

after climbing on to some projecting rock, he would 
go to the extreme end and look down over it as if it 
pleased him to watch the big waves break in foam 
on the black rocks a couple of hundred feet below. 
But it was not the big green waves or any sight in na- 
ture that drew him — he sniffed and sniffed and wrig- 
gled and twisted his black nose, and raised and de- 
pressed his ears as he sniffed, and was excited solely 
because the upward currents o'f air brought him tidings 
of living creatures that lurked In the rocks below — 
badger and fox and rabbit. One day when quitting 
one of these places, on looking up I spied Jack stand- 
ing on the summit of a precipice about seventy-five 
feet high. Jack saw me and waved his tall, and then 
started to come straight down to me ! From the top 
a faint rabbit-track was- visible winding downwards to 
within twenty-four feet of the ground; the rest was a 
sheer wall of rock. Down he dashed, faster and 
faster as he got to where the track ended, and then 
losing his footing he fell swiftly to the earth, but 
luckily dropped on a deep spongy turf and was not 
hurt. After witnessing this reckless act I knew how 
he had come by those frightful bruises on a former oc- 
casion. He had doubtless fallen a long* way down a 
cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones. But 
the lesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that 
where rabbits and foxes went he could go ! 

After all, the chief pleasure those blank bad days 
had for me was the thought that Jack was as happy as 
he could well be. But it was not enough to satisfy me, 
and by and by it cajne into my mind that I had been 

308 



My Friend Jack 

long enough at that place. It was hard to leave Jack, 
who had put himself so entirely in my hands, and 
trusted me so implicitly. But — the weather was keep- 
ing very bad: was there ever known such a June as 
this of 1907? So wet and windy and cold! Then, 
too, the bloom had gone from the furze- It was, I 
remembered, to witness this chief loveliness that I 
came. Looking on the wide moor and far-off boulder- 
strewn hills and seeing how rusty the bushes were, I 
quoted — 

The bloom has gone, and with the bloom go I, 

and early in the morning, with all my belongings on 
my back, I stole softly forth, glancing apprehensively 
in the direction of the kennel, and out on to the windy 
road. It was painful to me to have to decamp in this 
way; it made me think meanly of myself; but if Jack 
could read this and could speak his mind I think he 
would acknowledge that my way of bringing the con- 
nection to an end was best for both of us. I was not 
the person, or dog on two legs, he had taken me for, 
one with a proper desire to kill things: I only acted 
according to my poor lights. Nothing, then, remains 
to be said except that one word which it was not con- 
venient to speak on the windy morning of my depar- 
ture — Good-bye Jack. 



309 



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